


im only seventeen (i dont know anything)

by ElbridgeGerry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, God Save Me, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, coronavirus has made me 12 again, fuck terfs, goblet of fire - Freeform, half blood prince, in this house we Respect Women, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 76,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27216895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElbridgeGerry/pseuds/ElbridgeGerry
Summary: Fred and Hermione, if everybody drank their respecting Hermione juice.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Fred Weasley
Comments: 88
Kudos: 308





	1. Chapter 1

She is ablaze when he notices her in the Great Hall, a wildfire ripping through his brother, whose arrogance knew no bounds. Ron had, in a fit of jealous rage, boxed Harry out of his life when his name had floated out of the Goblet of Fire. He had obviously miscalculated, expecting her to be as bent out of shape as he was, and was now bearing the brunt of her annoyance at his misstep.

Beside him, George taunts his crimson-faced brother. He laughs — loudly.

There’s a moment of blistering silence before she turns on George, barking at him to stop encouraging Ron’s childishness. She chides him, too and before he can even register what’s happening he feels his cheeks redden and warm. 

He is Fred Weasley, sixteen years old and invincible. The girl, Hermione Granger, is just fourteen and already smarter than nearly everyone in the castle. He is sixteen, she is fourteen, and already he is in too deep. 

✶✶✶

The next time he notices her, the customary winter chill has settled in around the castle. She is perched on a bench across from him in the recently-emptied Transfiguration classroom, McGonagall standing between them talking some shite about a dance. 

Once McGonagall’s intervention into the Gryffindor house’s collective ability to dance has ended, they all traipse back up to the common room, the air practically sparkling with excitement.

Her hair is less unkempt than he remembers it, although he mentally concedes that he didn’t often make time to consider her hair. 

She is very different to the bushy-haired, buck-toothed eleven year old whose face had for so long represented her in his mind. She has, in truth, become much prettier and more self-possessed in the intervening years, as if she’s wearing her own existence much more comfortably now. 

Ron and Harry immediately take to agonising over who they’ll ask to the Yule Ball. Fred and George, deciding that they’ve got nothing they’d rather do and not yet ground down enough to suffer their homework, settle into the armchairs flanking the fireplace. Fred watches, bemused, as Harry and Ron complain _over_ Hermione about the lack of girls in their lives. Hermione, for want of a better description, takes it like a champ, keeping her nose shoved deep in an enormous leather-bound book. 

He looks between Harry and Ron, and then over to George, who is poorly stifling his laughter. Behind Fred, someone enters the common room and George’s face lights up in that way it only does when he’s about to torture one of his siblings. He grabs one of the many books laid out in front of Hermione, charming it to follow around his target. 

Hermione quirks an eyebrow at the loss of her book, before glancing around the room and cottoning on to exactly what’s about to happen. She smiles, but only just, and Fred’s stomach ties itself up in knots. He wonders what he’d have to do to get a real smile out of her, to draw one of those shockingly hearty laughs from her lips. He thinks that right now he’d try just about anything. 

“Watch and learn, gentlemen, watch and learn,” George says to Ron and Harry, pulling Fred from his reverie. 

It doesn’t take long for Angelina to notice the book, pluck it from the air, and turn to look at George. 

“Oi, Angelina. Fancy going to the Yule Ball with me?” 

“Alright, sure,” she shrugs, tossing the book back to George. Despite her nonchalance, she still grins before she rushes off to the girls’ dormitory. 

George, smug, crosses his arms behind his head, reclining into the armchair. Harry and Ron each look notably more stressed than before. 

“How’d you do that?” 

“Well, Ronald,” George says, leaning forward now like a grandfather preparing to impart hard-earned wisdom on his young charges, “the thing to remember is that women are people, too.” He sits back, and Ron blanches. 

Hermione slams her book shut, a shower of dust exploding from its pages. “Unlike some of you, I haven’t forgotten that we’ve still got classes. I’m going to —,"

“— the library,” Ron finishes. Hermione’s brows furrow, her lips pursing into the briefest of pouts.

“Yes,” is all she says, packing her stuff away and striding out. She leaves a vaguely vanilla-y aroma in her wake, and Fred instinctually turns his head towards the direction she left in. 

“What are we going to do, Harry?” Ron whines. Fred barks out a laugh. 

“Mate you’ve just let a perfectly good girl walk _right_ out that door.” Ron grimaces. 

“You can’t be serious. ‘Mione’s not a girl, she’s, well, she’s just Hermione, isn’t she?”

Fred eyes his brother, and wonders if maybe he is exactly as stupid as he seems.

“Well if she’s not a girl you won’t mind if I ask her then?” 

“What?!” Ron’s face flushes deep red. “You can’t ask her, that’s not fair to me. Tell him, Harry!” Harry has the decency to look embarrassed when Ron turns to him. 

“You’re already off to a brilliant start on the whole treating-women-like-people front, Ron,” George says. Ron looks furious. 

“Look all I’m saying is that if anyone’s going to ask her, I should have a right to go first.” Fred guffaws. 

“The right to go first?! Blimey Ron that is some proper vintage behaviour—” Ron starts to speak but Fred puts his hand up, silencing him, “— I think she should be spoiled for choice. And I think if I know our Hermione as well as I think I do, she’d want to be presented with all of her options before she can make a logical and rational decision on her own terms.” 

“Very well said, Frederick,” George says, leaning forward and stroking his non-existent beard. “In fact I think if young Ronald wants to prove his worthiness in taking Hermione to the ball he should have to do it fairly.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?” Ron demands, and Fred almost laughs at how quickly he’s acquiesced to their logic. 

“Well that’s up to you, isn’t it?” George cuts in. Fred catches his eye, and they both stand. 

“May the best wizard win!” Fred finishes, turning with his brother to leave the common room. 

When they make it a sufficient distance from the common room to outrun any potential prying eyes, George turns to him. 

“What was that all about, then?” He’s looking him dead in the eyes, as if him staring long and hard enough might materialise an answer on his face instead of having to hear his brother actually say the words. Fred stops to lean against the threshold of the abandoned sixth floor bathroom they have come to use as a makeshift laboratory. He crosses his arms, returning the look. 

“I don’t know.”

✶✶✶

The next few days are, truthfully, some of the most fun Fred’s had since the lead up to the World Cup.

Each day, Ron looks increasingly agitated. Caught between not wanting to lose a competition with Fred and also not knowing why he’s doing this at all, his mood takes a turn for the worse. 

It doesn’t make things any better that Fred is just so much better at making Hermione laugh than he is. 

It starts small, with charming a paper bird to follow her around the castle, landing on her desk before class starts and then fluttering up to the rafters to coo gently during class. He knows it’s successful when he hears Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, two of the most gossipy girls in the school, buzzing about Hermione Granger’s secret admirer. 

Then, he moves on to leaving a different bouquet of flowers with her name on it floating at the bottom of the dormitory stairs for her to find in the mornings. The sight of Ron’s face at breakfast signals his success. 

He convinces George to stay up and help him under the guise of product development. Lee stays up, too, although Fred quickly realises that he has no intention of helping him out. 

“So, finally working up the courage to go after Granger, is it?” Fred’s cup misses his mouth entirely. He feels the water soaking through his jumper. 

“Finally?” George asks, smirking. 

“Yeah it’s been, what? Two years? Three years now?” 

“It was _a week_ in third year, Lee. _A week_. And this has nothing to do with that.”

“I’ve never heard about this,” George says, arms crossed. 

“Yeah because it was one week _three years ago_ , and I knew you’d never let it go if I said anything.”

“Well you’re not wrong.” George taps his wand on a piece of parchment, which begins to loudly sing a Weird Sisters ballad. “And so now it’s all come back to bite you in the arse just at the same time that Ron’s discovering that his best friend is actually very attractive.” 

His heartbeat speeds up and he can feel his chest tighten. He looks away from George and Lee to the rain-battered window. He hadn’t thought this was anything more than just some lighthearted hassling of his brother, and the chance to maybe flirt with a girl who is, as his brother notes, very attractive. But when George puts it in such pessimistic framing— 

“Yeah. Yeah, basically that.” 

George looks at him, the mirth vanishing from his eyes. 

“Okay. Okay,” George takes a deep breath, “we can work with that.”

✶✶✶

Another morning, another surprise for Hermione, this time in the form of a gentle shower of flower petals above her head at breakfast. Mindful of her tidiness and antipathy towards being the centre of attention, the rose petals evaporate before they hit any surfaces. It had taken him and George hours to perfect that, and the varnishes of several desks in the library were duly sacrificed to the cause. 

Her face is radiant. She’s giggling (Hermione Granger, giggling!), staring at the petals with awe as a clump of Gryffindor girls forms around her. Her face is bright red in a way Fred has never seen before, and it takes all his will power to not get up and ask her there and then. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ron approach, notice the flowers, scowl at him, and then stalk out of the Great Hall. 

Fred: 1, Ron: 0.

✶✶✶

He’s up all night the day before he plans on asking her. So far he’s made her laugh five times, and smile twelve. Each time feels like the first time he’s ever accomplished it.

This time, he reckons, will be his crowning jewel. 

It had taken them until nigh on 3 am to perfect the choral arrangement, and then several hours on top of that to keep the fireworks from actually singeing the stone masonry. Running on little more than adrenaline and the single piece of toast he’d managed to snag, he’s more confident than ever that this will work. 

10 am comes and he is, miraculously, in Magical Theory (although, as he tells a stunned Angelina, it’s only because it puts him closer to the Ancient Runes classroom where Hermione is during this block). 

Behind his and Angelina’s shared desk, two Ravenclaws aggressively whisper, nodding occasionally towards Cedric Diggory, who was cloistered on the opposite end of the room. 

“— Cho Chang —,”

“— Harry Potter, though—,”

“— Davies with Fleur—,” He leans back in his chair, pushing off onto the back two legs, listening more intently.

“And did you hear _Hermione Granger_ got asked this morning?” 

Fred snaps down in his chair so loudly Professor Vector briefly stops lecturing, looking as though a dragon had just personally appeared in class. 

That absolute bastard had done it. Ronald Weasley, bane of men, women, and children alike, had managed to convince Hermione to go with him. 

His mind is spinning. 

Even as he practically runs back to the common room, his mind is still moving too fast for his body. 

He’s barely at the Fat Lady when he hears George bellow, “Ron relax!” 

It’s not enough warning. His back hits the wall hard and his hand is at his wand in a second. 

“You rat bastard,” Ron spits in his face. For a moment all he can feel is the blossoming pain where his head had smacked the wall.

He puts a hand on Ron’s chest, forcing him backwards. 

“What—,” he rasps, “—in Merlin’s beard are you on about?” 

“Oh never mind,” Ron moans, “but you’d think you’d at least bother telling your own brother.” He slinks off down the stairs Fred had just come up. 

Dazed, Fred looks to his twin, who is wearing a shit-eating grin. 

“Well bloody done, Freddie,” George says, patting his arm. 

“Well done?— _Crudesco_ —,” the portrait swings open, “— I heard _he’d_ managed it.”

“You what? No, he came tearing up here yelling about what a prat you were and how you hadn’t even given him a warning and how unfair it all was. Took Harry quite a bit of negotiating just to get him to stop yelling.”

“But I haven’t even asked her yet! Some girls in my class were whispering about her having been asked and I’d just assumed Ron had gone and done it.”

George nudges him and nods towards where Harry and Hermione are seated in front of the fireplace. She has a book placed gingerly on her knees. Her face, illuminated by the fire, is something else entirely. All sharp lines and soft russet tones, and he just knows he is a goner. 

They slide onto the couch on either side of her. “Congratulations are in order then, are they not?” George says. 

“Who’s the lucky bloke?” Fred says, trying to match his brother’s calm.

“Or lady, we don’t judge.” Hermione looks towards the roaring fire, equal parts annoyance and smugness on her face. Fred’s stomach churns, and he realises he’s putting quite a lot of effort into breathing. 

Just as Hermione shuts her book, a minor uproar echoes through the portrait corridor.

Ginny pulls Ron through, followed by what looks like several year groups’ worth of girls. Ron looks sickly, like he’s just had the fright of his life.

Fred looks to George, who is sporting the same expression he did when Ron cried crocodile tears as a child.

“What happened?” Harry demands, moving to help settle Ron on the armchair next to Fred. 

“He just asked Fleur Delacour out,” Ginny responds, and Hermione looks at Ron with such an intense look of pity it shocks a bolt of hope through Fred. 

“ _What_?” Hermione asks. 

“What did she say?” Harry asks, looking at Ron with equal pity. 

“No, of course,” Hermione answers for him. George thumps Fred’s arm and he bats him away. 

Ron shakes his head and Fred almost wheezes. “She said _yes_?!” Hermione gasps. 

“Don’t be silly,” he pauses, his face falling. ”There she was walking by — you know how I like the way they walk — couldn’t help it, it just sort of slipped out…”

“Actually,” Ginny interjects, “he sort of screamed at her. It was a bit frightening.” 

“And what did you do then?” Harry asks, crouching in front of Ron. 

“What else? I ran for it. I’m not cut out for this, Harry. I don’t know what got into me.” 

George thumps his arm again and motions towards the door. Fred follows, shoulders relaxed and head held high.

✶✶✶

In the end, at the vigorous encouragement of Angelina (“c’mon Fred, don’t make her sit with Merlin knows who else”), he asks Alicia Spinnet. She is, of course, very pretty — they had been something akin to friends-with-benefits for much of the start of last year — so he tries not to ruminate too intently on how much he wishes he were going with someone else. 

When they gather to watch the Champions’ processional, Fred’s heart shatters into a million tiny pieces and scatters in the wind. 

_Krum_. 

Ron he could compete with. Outside of Cedric Diggory, there were probably very few people at Hogwarts he couldn’t reasonably measure up to — he may not care what people think but he knows that Lavender Brown never fails to look his way when he or George walk into a room, or that Patricia Stimpson strategically places her seat in a classroom relative to him. He’s not completely thick, after all. 

But Viktor Krum? Internationally-renowned athlete Viktor Krum? Viktor Krum, the Triwizard champion who practically every girl and some boys at this school were drooling over?

No chance. 

But the issue of Viktor Krum is secondary to tonight’s main problem, which is that Hermione is so heartbreakingly beautiful he’s not certain he can even breathe. 

✶✶✶

Hours later, Ron and Hermione are screaming at each other, though it’s clear she has the upper hand in vitriol. He nudges George, nodding towards the spectacle. 

“Go on,” George murmurs, barely audible over the music. 

He does, clearing the distance in several long strides. 

“Ron you spoil EVERYTHING,” Hermione yells after his retreating form, her voice cracking. When she turns around, tears are streaming down her face. Fred’s heart collapses.

She sits on the stairs, pulling one of her heels off and rubbing at her foot. He drops to the ground in front of her, pulling his knees to his chest and holding his wand between his fingers. 

“Oh please don’t be cross with me, he’s been so horrible to me lately,” she says as a tear drips off her cheek and lands on her bare leg.

Fred says nothing, just lifts his wand — 

“ _Dianvrecho.”_ The rose petals begin falling around her again, slower this time than before. 

Hermione’s face crumples. Fred panics. 

“It was you,” she whispers. He shrugs. 

“I thought it was Ron at first, but it was all much too advanced for him,” she sniffles, “and then I thought it was Viktor and he was just being blasé and not owning to it.” 

Fred flicks his wand and a little chirping bird perches on her shoulder. Hermione lets out the tiniest of gasps. 

“But why?”

He extends a hand to her. 

“C’mon, there’s still a few dances in this party yet.” 

✶✶✶

He always expected that she’d smell like old books. What’s surprising is that that’s not all she smells like: warm vanilla and jasmine cascade off her with every move she makes. 

His head is screaming and spinning all at once as he pulls her onto the dance floor. There are people who are looking at them, he’s keenly aware of that, but he’s more focused on making sure he keeps breathing. Her periwinkle dress practically melts into the floor beneath them as he pulls her close to him. 

“Alright Granger, let’s see those moves.” She huffs out a laugh, laying a hand on his chest as he wraps his hand around her waist. “Unless you want me to go get some of that punch George and I spiked, first.” A tear streams down her cheek and he lets go of her hand to brush it away. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, smiling despite herself, “your brother can be awfully cruel sometimes.” 

“Yeah, he can be,” he says, bitterly, watching her intently as she collects herself. “It probably doesn’t help that I’ve been egging him on for the past month.” 

She looks up at him, quizzical. Her big, brown eyes shine under the frosted lights. 

So Fred explains, and when he’s done her cheeks are bright red. 

After a moment’s quiet, she whispers, “But why? Why me?” 

“Well you’re brilliant, aren’t you?” She just blinks at him. “I mean beauty and brains, right? I’d be mad to not at least give it a shot.” 

In all the times he has made Hermione smile or laugh, he has never felt as gleaming a sense of accomplishment as he does now in this moment, having finally shocked her into wordlessness.

Fred is not as book smart as she is. If his academic aptitude was even a cause at all it was surely a lost one, but he knows his way around people better than almost anyone else. And in this moment, looking down at Hermione, whose lips are slightly agape around the shade of a gasp, he knows that he could lean down and kiss her. 

His heart tenses as he feels her increasingly ragged breathing, her hand trembling ever so slightly against his chest. An enchanted snowflake catches in her eyelashes. He’s never noticed just how long they are. 

His face is suddenly warm, and it takes him just a second too long to process that he’s closed the gap between them considerably, that the warmth on his face is her breath. It would take the most minute of movements to finish off the distance, he could do it so easily —

A tap on his shoulder. He pulls back, straightening up. When had the song changed? 

“May I dance with her?” Viktor Krum asks, and Fred steps back even more. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” he starts, looking to Hermione, who is looking at the wall far behind Krum. He figures it’s now or never, so he puts his hand on Hermione’s bicep, pulling her in close so he can press the chastest of kisses to her hairline, before nodding to Krum and turning away. 

“Who vas that?” He can hear Krum asking as he leaves. 

“Oh, he’s just my friend’s brother,” she says. 

Fred can't rationally be upset, because of course that’s exactly what he is to her, but it doesn't stop the twinge of pain he feels anyways. 

He makes a beeline for George and Angelina, who have just breathlessly returned to the Great Hall from whatever corridor they’d been cloistered together down for the past hour. Angelina stores a flask in her clutch bag.

“Alright, lads?” Fred asks, slinging his arms around each of them. 

✶✶✶

He knew immediately that his stunt had caused quite a stir – he hears several of the younger Gryffindor girls whispering not particularly quietly at breakfast the following morning and again later in the common room. It isn’t, however, until the day after that that he realises the damage he’s wrought.

He’s seated at the Gryffindor table, giving serious consideration to having another slice of bacon when his mid-morning haze is rudely interrupted by a magazine landing on his plate, sending beans flying. 

“Well done, arsehole,” his youngest sister, Ginny, admonishes. He stares at her before looking at the bean spray that now covers his, George, Angelina, and Lee’s food. 

“What are you —?” 

“Read it, Fred, honestly!” Ginny scolds, before turning and stomping back to her friends further up the table. Fred stares at the copy of _Witch Weekly_ long enough that Lee snaps it up and begins reading the banner story out: 

“Harry Potter's Secret Heartache. A boy like no other, perhaps — yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence, writes Rita Skeeter.”

Angelina groans (“She won’t even relax over Christmas?”)

“Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, fourteen-year-old Harry Potter thought he had found solace in his steady girlfriend at Hogwarts, Muggle-born Hermione Granger—,”

“— A likely story,” George cuts in. Lee smirks.

“Little did he know that he would shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss. Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious girl, seems to have a taste for men that famous wizards like Harry alone cannot satisfy. Since the arrival at Hogwarts of Viktor Krum, Bulgarian Seeker and hero of the last World Quidditch Cup, Miss Granger has been toying with both boys' affections. Krum, who is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, has already invited her to visit him in Bulgaria over the summer holidays, and insists that he has ‘never felt this way about any other girl.’” Fred is racked by a chill. That smooth bastard had done _what_?

“Not satisfied with just two Triwizard champions, Miss Granger has also reportedly set her sights on one Frederick Weasley, 17— wow, you wish, Fred—” Lee teases, “— son of Alaric Weasley, a ministry official. A brief tussle between Weasley and Krum (pictured) was reported at the tournament’s Yule Ball, though no confirmation yet of what provoked it.”

“Fred, you fought Krum?” Lee asks, looking very genuine. 

“No, ‘course I didn’t. I…— just keep reading.” Lee arches an eyebrow, but dutifully returns to his performance.

“However, it might not be Miss Granger's doubtful natural charms that have captured these unfortunate boys' interest. ‘She's really ugly,’ says Pansy Parkinson, a pretty and vivacious fourth-year student, ‘but she'd be well up to making a Love Potion, she's quite brainy. I think that's how she's doing it.’ Love Potions are, of course, banned at Hogwarts, and no doubt Albus Dumbledore will want to investigate these claims. In the meantime, Harry Potter’s well-wishers must hope that, next time, he bestows his heart on a worthier candidate.” 

They all sit in silence for a moment. Angelina is the first to stir, snatching the magazine to glance over the story herself. “That’s remarkably cruel, how could you publish that about a teenager?” She worries, brushing her fingers over the byline. 

“Well you look great, Fred,” George says, pointing to the picture accompanying the article. It very clearly shows him and Hermione, their faces mere centimeters from each other, with Krum approaching from the side. He’s got at least half a foot on Krum, which does make him puff with pride a bit, but then the very quiet voice that is his conscience begins to smother that feeling. 

“You reckon she’s okay?” Angelina asks, looking up and down the table for her with no luck. 

“I should probably go and see, right?” Fred asks. George looks at him, the faintest trace of sorrow in his eyes. “Yeah, alright, I’ll go and see her.” 

He takes the stairs by threes and makes it back to Gryffindor tower in a matter of minutes. Inside, there’s no sign of anybody except Lavender Brown, who is curled up on the couch with a copy of _Witch Weekly_. She’d obviously watched him walk in, but has conspicuously returned to reading her magazine to avoid making eye contact with him.

“Lavender, have you seen Hermione?” She looks up at him, wide-eyed. 

“I didn't know you knew my name,” she says.

“Er, yeah, we’ve gone to school together for three years.” 

She stares at him in silence, grinning. 

“Lavender?”

“Yes?”

“Hermione?”

“Oh. Yes. She’s probably in the old Charms classroom on the fifth floor. There’s where she usually goes to cry.” Fred stares at her for a moment longer, baffled at the notion that Lavender keeps a catalogue of where people go to cry, before he thanks her and heads off in that direction. 

Lavender had been, perhaps horrifyingly, spot on about Hermione’s location. But rather than crying, she was reclined on top of one of the old oak desks, charming shredded paper to float above her like snow. He pauses just outside the door, watching her. 

“Try a recycling charm,” he says after a few moments pass. Hermione squeaks, and the pieces of paper fall like actual snow, sticking to her hair and clothes. “Sorry!” She huffs, pulling bits of paper off her. “I just came to see if you’re okay.” She looks at him and laughs, a bright, cool laugh that only sounds a bit manic.

“So you’ve seen it then?” He moves to sit beside her on the oak desk, although his legs are much longer than hers and mostly just drag on the stone floor. 

“Yeah, Ginny made sure of that.”

They sit in silence for a moment, Hermione staring at her shoes. 

“It was all really impressive magic, y’know. Really genius stuff,” she says, plucking another scrap of paper off her jumper. He can feel himself blushing. 

“It’s nothing you couldn’t figure out, I’m sure.” He takes his turn to pull paper from her curls, letting it flutter to the ground. 

“Oh I’m sure I could, too, but I would never have _thought_ to do it. You really are so clever in that way. I don’t know how you come up with all this stuff, it is always the most remarkable magic.” 

He is stunned. That level of compliment would normally glance off him, but from Hermione? It’s something else entirely. 

“And you do it all so selflessly,” she continues. “Even if it’s not what I’d call particularly _kind_ , you’re always trying to make someone laugh, to make someone’s day a little better.” She exhales, smoothing her hands along her jeans, and Fred wonders what it would be like to take her hand. So he does. 

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, not with Ron or Krum or the news or anyone else,” he says, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. 

“I’m perfectly capable of getting myself in trouble of my own accord, thanks,” she snaps. Fred laughs. 

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true enough, isn’t it? Well, you know what I mean, ‘Mione, I’m not trying to cause you any trouble here.”

“What are you trying to do?” She asks after a moment’s pause. He looks straight ahead, considering his words, but decides words are not his best way forward here and turns to look back to Hermione. 

Her breath hitches when they make eye contact, and it confirms that he has chosen wisely. In an instant, he reaches his hand up to her face, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear before cupping her face. 

He brings their foreheads together, nuzzling his nose against hers until there’s barely any space left between them. 

“Just tell me not to,” he whispers against her lips, but she doesn’t. She moves her hand to fist his jumper. It’s all the encouragement he needs to bring their lips gently, but surely, together. 

It’s not fireworks, because fireworks are a fleeting fancy. This is so much more. This is the first rain after a drought that quenches the wildfires and heals the scorched earth. 

He pulls away momentarily to stand, and position himself between her legs, this time cradling her face between both of his hands. When he kisses her again she makes a soft noise in the back of her throat that he’s certain will kill him. 

He wants to stay here forever, or at least until his legs give out, whichever comes last. He wants to —

She pulls away, briefly looking up at him through her lashes and then down to the ground beneath her feet.

“That’s not an answer,” she breathes heavily. He laughs at her, amazed by her boldness. He pulls his hands from her face, slipping them into his jeans pockets, looking out the frost-glazed window behind her.

“I meant what I said. I think you’re incredible, and I think any bloke in this school who doesn’t have at least a bit of a crush on you is probably lying to thewmselves. And… even if I didn’t feel that way about you, you’ve always had such a rough go of it between the Boy Who Lived,” his voice wobbles like an old-timey radio announcer, “and my prick brother that I think you being treated decently is more than past due.” 

When he finally looks at Hermione again, there are tears in her eyes. He hopes this isn’t some newfangled Weasley special, making her cry. She stands and moves towards the door. His heart sinks. 

“Oh I wish you’d said all this _months_ ago. I followed you around like a puppy for years and you never noticed me and now? Now? My best friend is being frog marched off to his death as entertainment, my other best friend has decided to ruin everything by deluding himself into thinking he fancies me, Viktor Krum – who is, I should say, perfectly lovely despite the attempts of every boy at this school to caricature him as some villain – seems hellbent on unwillingly shunting me into the spotlight, not to mention all the studying I’ve got to do. And now _this_?” She covers her eyes with one hand. “Fred, if you’d said this to me even a month ago I could’ve — would’ve — been all yours.” She removes her hand to look at him, no longer teary-eyed, but instead mostly miffed. Classic Granger. 

As he stands to once again close the distance between them, a pack of students – mostly younger than him, and mostly Slytherin, save for the odd Ravenclaw – wander by the door. One, a Slytherin girl he recognises as one constantly hanging around the Malfoy boy, stops to point. 

Blaise Zabini, a Slytherin fourth year he does recognise, pauses next to her. “It’s a pity, Granger, that you couldn’t brew a potion to clean your filthy blood.”

Without missing a beat, Fred hits him with a bat bogey hex.

The ensuing detention, he insists, is worth it.

✶✶✶

Later, when Snape is certain that he’s scrubbed enough cauldrons to have learned to not hex posh gits anymore, Fred returns to the common room. 

He surveys the scene: George, Angelina, Lee, Alicia, and Katie Bell sit on the couches and armchairs in front of the fireplace, at the table just diagonal from them sit Ron, Harry, and Hermione, whose heads are set so closely together it’s almost impossible to see where one person ends and the next begins. 

He sits on the floor at Alicia’s feet leaning his head back against her knees, as he’s done so many times over the past six years. Lee taps his leg with his foot.

“Heard that Slytherin boy had bats crawling out of his nose for hours after, well done.”

Fred, exhausted, manages: “My sister taught me that, of all people.” 

“Probably to use against our dreadful brother,” George says, grabbing a loose Ton-Tongue Toffee and pelting it at Ron. 

“Oi, fuck off!” Ron bellows, to the amusement of much of the rest of the common room's denizens. 

As George and Ron snipe at each other, and Alicia cards her fingers through his hair, Fred stares into the fire, mulling over his emotionally draining day. 

Ultimately, the root cause of his exhaustion is himself. Though there was no way he could have possibly expected himself to have cottoned on to his feelings for Hermione at some predestined time, he _had_ harboured acknowledged feelings for her at one point in his life and, if Hermione’s earlier upset was to be believe, they had likely been reciprocated, even then. 

Still it’s not in his nature to dwell on the past, especially not when there’s such an enticing challenge as _obliterating Viktor Krum_ sitting right in front of him. 

But the fire in front of him is so warm and he is so physically fatigued that sleep comes to him much more rapidly than scheming does. 

Over the course of several hours, the Common Room begins to empty out, and Alicia leaves too, gently removing her legs from behind him and tucking a pillow behind his back to keep him propped up. Although still dozing, he can hear George and Angelina talking softly on the couch, each occasionally failing to muffle a laugh. 

At some point, Angelina stands, “I’m going to bed.”

“I’m gonna stay up and wait for him,” George replies, sounding every bit as sleepy as Angelina does.

“He okay?” George pauses for a moment.

“Yeah, always is.”

Angelina leaves and everything is silent save for the crackling of the fire. 

At some point he rouses himself from his nap, shaking his head and stretching out his limbs. He takes a moment to return to this dimension, turning to look out the darkened window to his left before turning to George. 

“Morning,” George says in a sing-songy voice.

“Time is it?” Fred murmurs.

“Quarter past one.” He watches Fred as he picks himself up off the ground, dropping into an armchair. “So what happened to make you go on a Slytherin hunt without me?” 

“Just the usual slurring,” George looks at him expectantly. “That Zabini cunt called Hermione a you-know-what in so many words, and I’ve been wanting to try that hex out for a while now.”

“And how’d it go before that?” He looks around the common room — “She’s gone to bed, you’re alright.”

“Yeah, I mean, just buggered the timings, didn’t I?” He launches into a recollection of the day’s events, stopping every so often to check that nobody was descending the dormitory stairs.

“Well the way I see it,” George says when Fred’s done talking, “you’ve got the options. You can either sit back and bide your time waiting for Krum to fizzle out,” Fred snorts, “or you can barrel on ahead.” Fred looks towards the noticeboard, where Hermione’s SPEW poster is prominently affixed above a Gladrag’s advertisement. 

“George, I haven’t got a clue what to do.”


	2. Was it love or fear of the cold that led us through the night?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup kings
> 
> i'm going to space out updates a little more from here on out so i don't monopolise the ship tag too much. i've written up to chapter 7 so far and have the plot sketched out through gof and halfway into ootp because i am Manic. thank you all for your comments, they're like lovely little hugs in this awful, cold, corona-y world.
> 
> here's a [vibe tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_WDelQbJE&ab_channel=LokeshJb) for this chapter. viva livejournal.

When Hermione Granger was ten years old, a boy in her class had tugged on her braids, told her he had a crush on her and asked her to meet her by the swingset at playtime. When she’d excitedly made her way to the swingset, he and his friends had kicked mud at her and laughed in her face. Returning to class, her face still muddied and tear-stained, she’d been so upset that the legs on the boy’s chair had snapped clean in half, dumping him unceremoniously onto the ground. 

When she was eleven years old, she’d received a visit from a woman dressed in an emerald velvet gown who claimed to be a witch. She’d told Hermione that she was special, that she had magical powers that she needed to learn to contain and that, if her parents allowed, she could join a whole new world of people exactly like her. She’d given Hermione a letter scrawled on parchment paper and told her she would be pleased to see her on 1 September, 1991 at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Before she had left, she had handed Hermione a copy of _Hogwarts: A History_.

When she was twelve, one of the people she’d thought had been her first friends in the magical world had called her a stuck-up know-it-all, and she’d run crying to a bathroom where she’d promptly been cornered by a troll, and rescued. There, she had firmly resolved to never let herself be distracted by boys, that her education would be her utmost priority and everything else could come later. 

It was, of course, an impossible ask of herself, and just weeks later she’d had her breath taken completely away by a boy. And for so much of the next two years she’d brutally fought herself over her crush on him, pulled between the poles of acting very much like a young girl in love and behaving like the adult she wished she were.

Finally, when she was fourteen, mere days before her fifteenth birthday, she’d finally managed to put Fred Weasley out of her head and heart, finally convincing herself that this would be the year of No Boys. 

And now, at fifteen years of age, Hermione Granger is having her head turned by not one but two of them. 

✶✶✶

It’s a dreadful day in mid January when she finds herself once again studying under the watchful eye of international quidditch legend and Durmstrang champion Viktor Krum. At first she hadn’t been annoyed by it, found it sweet even, that somebody could be so interested in her he could still find her worthy of time at her most boring, but as the days wore on it grew tiresome. 

Viktor is, when he does speak up, very pleasant. He asks very insightful questions, and seems more than content to listen to her prattle on about whatever it is that he gets her started on. Several years ago this would’ve been it for her. This would have been all she ever would have asked for.

When he’d first asked her to the Yule Ball, she had been overcome with anxiety that this had all been some horrible prank, that he was somehow a part of some massive conspiracy to humiliate her. But then he’d taken to following her around the castle like a lost puppy, after some time warming up to her enough to interject comments, either about the castle, her, or his life, and she’d finally come round to the idea that he might actually be genuine. 

Right from the start, his fanclub had been inescapable. Errant thoughts had told her that maybe he was using her to find places that were quiet and off the beaten path, but he was so unfailingly earnest that those thoughts had been quickly dealt with. 

From the day after the announcement of the Yule Ball she’d been bombarded with attention and kindness, and the most loving magic she’d ever seen. Hundreds of flowers at the most surprising times, making her feel like the most beautiful girl in the room. In that moment she was certain this, this… _thing_ with Viktor, whatever it was, was something special. 

And then stupid, wonderful Fred Weasley had gone and admitted it was all him, and that not only was it all him but he’d at long last reciprocated those feelings she’d spent so long trying to bury. And then one day he’d kissed her, and she knew there was no turning back, she was done for. Her heart ached so much she couldn’t stand it; she’d meant every word she’d said to him, if only he’d figured out his feelings for her just a few days earlier then none of this would be a problem, then she’d leap happily into his arms and all would be well. 

But he hadn’t, and Viktor had gotten to her first. And while she knew there was no reasonable way she could argue for the merits of having a relationship with someone on the basis of first-come first-served, she had to admit to herself that if Fred had come out with it all before Viktor had, it probably would have sent her spiralling. With Viktor there was no history, no summers at the Burrow, no younger brothers, no memories of her being bucktoothed Hermione Granger, for whom being right was not just a fact of life, but its only point. When Viktor had shown interest in her she could be certain that there would be no repeats of her childhood traumas, and that just wasn’t something she could have been willing to trust with Fred had there been no Viktor first.

There also remained the issue of what a relationship with Fred would actually _mean._ With Viktor, there would always be a definitive end date. She could convince herself that a long distance relationship could work, but Viktor didn’t just live hundreds of miles away from her, he occupied a completely different sphere of existence than she did. He would finish school and go off to be an all-star Quidditch player, where he would be treated to every kind of hedonism the wizarding world had to offer while Hermione remained at Hogwarts for three more years. 

With Fred the issue is more… complex. Yes he would (maybe) be finishing school in a year, but she couldn’t foresee a world where the Weasleys weren’t an integral part of her life. If she did start a relationship with him, she’d have to get past the obstacle of not just her and Ron’s friendship, but also the very real possibility that they could split up and she’d be deprived of some of the most important people in the world to her. 

There had yet to be any overtures from either of them about exclusivity, or even about putting labels to whatever was there, and for that she was tremendously grateful. It of course didn’t settle her nerves any; not in her entire life had Hermione ever been anyone's first choice, even in the most certain thing in her life – her friendship with Harry and Ron – she was still a secondary character. And as much as the attention was a boost to her confidence, she still couldn’t help but feeling that it was all so tenuous, and that if she even hinted at making the wrong move it would all collapse beneath her. And so, for the first time in her life, Hermione Granger was paralysed by fear. 

In all this she was forced into an even more impracticable position because her best friend Ron had gone and convinced himself he fancied her (though she knew he wasn’t admitting it to anyone yet) and was now behaving like an unmitigated prick. She’d never be able to put her other best friend, Harry, in such a tricky spot, especially since he needed to be focusing all his energies on surviving the Triwizard Tournament. And there was the fact that she had been forced to be more keenly aware of all of her interactions with him because of that horrible Skeeter woman. No matter how much she insisted on putting on a brave face for the world, she was increasingly paranoid about all the eyes on her. Every time Harry looked at her, she could feel the eyes of everybody in the castle on her (not Harry, of course, because despite him being one of the Hogwarts champions, it was somehow her burden and responsibility to provide stories for the whole wizarding world). Now, under more social attention than she’d ever faced before, she somehow felt lonelier than ever.

That is, until she’s jolted awake one night by the realisation that there _is_ someone out there who she can lean on. 

✶✶✶

She’d been waiting the entire day, mostly out of nerves and nascent anxiety, and knew she only had to give a few more minutes of her time in the library before she could politely shake Viktor and head back to the Gryffindor Common Room in search of Ginny Weasley. 

Viktor had insisted on walking her up to Gryffindor tower, much to her dismay. It was not, she told herself, because she didn’t enjoy his company, but because she couldn’t stand the inevitable leering from the other Hogwarts students, of which there was much. A Ravenclaw girl she didn’t recognise hissed at her, and someone on the staircase had jeered “where’s Potter, Granger? Off crying?” Still, Viktor’s stoicism had been remarkably steadying through it all. In the end, she was grateful she didn’t have to do the walk alone. 

“Goodnight, Hermy-own-ninny,” Viktor offers when they reach the top of the stairs, before taking her hand and pressing a kiss to it. She smiles, but does not say anything else, completely emotionally drained.

She rasps the password at the portrait of the Fat Lady, which swings open allowing her entrance. Immediately she sees Ginny seated alone at a table with a small stack of books. Hermione slides into the chair opposite her. 

“Oh, hey Hermione,” Ginny says dreamily, blinking several times as she looks up from her opened book.

Ginny is in the unique position of being everything Hermione secretly wishes she could be. Vivacious, pretty, and bold, there has never been a person or a challenge Ginny can’t conquer. And in all her years of chasing after Harry, she has never once looked childish or desperate, always holding herself with such poise that, despite Harry being her best friend, Hermione has often wondered if Ginny isn’t too good for _him._

“I’m not bothering you, am I?” Hermione asks, looking about the room to make sure nobody is paying attention to her. 

“Merlin, no. I’m only reading about previous World Cups,” she lifts the book as evidence. “Do you need something?” 

“I need… I need help,” Hermione says, and Ginny’s expression moulds into one of shock for the briefest of seconds, before she rearranges it into one more reminiscent of her own mother’s mother-hen looks. 

“Yeah, anything. What’s up?”

“It’s actually a… friend of mine who needs advice,” Ginny already looks sceptical. “You see, she’s stuck between two boys. One of them is much older than her, but is the first boy to have ever shown any interest in her, and is very nice, even if he is a little boring. And the other —,”

“—my brother.” Ginny cuts in, and Hermione blushes.

“And the other, she’s been interested in for years, but she finally decided to give up hope on at the start of this year and now he’s decided he has feelings for her.”

“Not to mention that Ron’s kicking off and Harry’s about to go and get himself blown up,” Ginny sighs. “Well it’s not a very good situation to be in, I’ll give you that much.” She dogears her page and then shuts the book, sliding it into her bag. “How honest would you like me to be with you?” 

Hermione smiles, Ginny is remarkably self-possessed for someone of her age, though she supposes that has something to do with growing up with six older brothers. 

“Very honest, please.” 

“If you ask me, I think Krum’s a bit of a dud. Sure he’s a world famous athlete, and I’m sure that counts _somewhere_ , but he’s also so… _mean_. No – no I know you’re going to tell me that he’s actually very nice to you, but he’s been here three months now and I haven’t seen him be pleasant even in passing to anybody but you, and maybe Karkaroff. And I’m not really going to give you an assessment of my brother, but I think there’s something to be said for looking at how people treat people who can’t do anything for them.”

✶✶✶

The mid-January Hogsmeade approach is hurtling towards her, with such rapidity that she’d hardly clocked it was happening until the day before. They were meant to be meeting Sirius, Harry’s convict-on-the-run godfather with a heart of gold, who had relocated to Hosgmeade as soon as he’d heard that someone had put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire. That alone was causing Hermione significant stress, compounded even more by the knowledge that Harry would be sacrificing time that could otherwise be spent preparing for the next Triwizard tournament task. 

“Are you coming to Hogsmeade, then?” She whispers to Viktor in the library that Friday night. He regards her for a moment, apparently surprised she’d stopped reading long enough to ask him a question. 

“No,” he grunts. “Practice for tournament.” Hermione nods thoughtfully. Of course. There was barely a month left until the next task, and any sensible champion (so: not Harry) would be preparing in any and all spare time. 

“Oh, right. Well that’s a shame, Hogsmeade really is lovely at this time of year.” He nods at her, and she smiles. Several desks behind Viktor, Ginny is waving her hands wildly to get her attention. When Hermione finally looks at her, she mouths the words “dump him!” 

“Viktor, I’m so sorry, my friend Ginny over there appears to be having some trouble with her Muggle Studies homework, would you mind terribly if I went to help her?” He looks behind her at Ginny, who immediately snaps into shape, waving casually at them. Viktor looks back to Hermione and shakes his head. “I will see you later, Hermy-own-ninny.” She smiles at him as he leaves. 

“Honestly Ginny,” she says, throwing her stuff down in the empty space next to the only Weasley sister, “you’re going to get me into trouble!”

“What’s your game plan?” Ginny asks, shutting her book. 

“I still haven’t got a clue. I’ve never had anything planned less in my life. ” 

“You’re not staying with him, are you?” 

“I don’t even know that there’s a ‘with him’ to stay with! Viktor just seems content to sit around and watch me study, which is fine, but… it seems like that’s _all_ he wants me to do.. And Fred seems to want something more but he seems completely incapable of coming out and saying it. And say I _do_ pursue something with him – he’s going to leave school in a year and probably go out and meet hundreds of beautiful witches who will throw themselves at him even more than they already do here now, and then we’ll inevitably split up and then I’ll never be able to visit you all at the Burrow ever again and your mum will hate me and that’s assuming we even get over the hurdle of Ron not despising me forever to start with!” 

Ginny stares at her, an eyebrow raised almost to her hairline. “Blimey, Hermione, you’re sounding a bit like Trelawney there. Are the skies always grey around you?” Hermione fists her hands into her lap. “I think this might be a really good opportunity for you, actually. I think, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, I think you need to learn to live in the moment a bit more. And I think you need to learn how to share the emotional burden with other people. It might seem like it’s you against the world right now, but that’s just not the case. It’s nice that there are plenty of boys chasing after you right now, and that should feel good on its own, but I think it should also be a reminder to you that lots of people love you very much and want what’s best for you.” Hermione is shocked into silence, staring at the stone wall behind Ginny as tears sting at her eyes. Ginny reaches for Hermione’s hand, taking it. “Hermione, I’m serious. It’s up to you how you proceed with this situation, whether you pick Krum, my brother, or neither. But I think you should talk to Fred. He may be incapable of taking himself seriously but from what I’ve seen he takes _you_ very seriously. Just tell him what you’ve told me.”

Hermione nods. 

“And I wouldn’t worry about mum not loving you, she practically thinks of you as a daughter, I don’t think there’s anything you could do to change that.” 

They walk back to Gryffindor Tower together, deliberately talking about anything but boys or the Triwizard Tournament, and more than ever before Hermione feels like there’s a chance – no matter how fleeting – that she doesn’t have to do everything by herself. 

They run into Fred and George halfway up the Grand Staircase, where George shows off a ‘POTTER STINKS’ badge they’ve charmed to slur each of the other champions in turn, finishing with the words ‘VIKTOR “WONKY FAINT” KRUM.’ Ginny laughs so hard she snorts. Hermione huffs as she gives the password to the Fat Lady. “Oh I wish you wouldn’t,” she says. 

“Wouldn’t what?” Fred asks.

“Wouldn’t make fun of him! It’s totally against the spirit of the tournament.” 

“We don’t wish him any harm!” George says, tossing the badge to Ginny who catches it and stows it in her robes.

“Yeah, we really do wish him luck on the next task.”

“We’ve put down a galleon each that he’ll beat Harry.” Hermione stops dead in her tracks, whirling around to face them. As soon as she does it, she realises she’s made a mistake: they’re both wearing shit-eating grins.

She sighs, deflating into the nearest armchair, not willing to pursue it further. “What are you two doing this evening, then?” Fred throws his bag to the ground, dropping onto the couch without an ounce of delicacy or grace. George follows, with slightly more poise. 

“Lee swears he’s discovered a hangover-curing spell so we’re off to put it through some rigorous scientific examinations.”

“Can I come?” Ginny asks, leaning on the arm of Hermione’s chair. 

“Absolutely not, you are far too young to partake in such hedonism.” Fred says, tsk’ing at her.

“You keen, Hermione?” George asks, and she lets out a laugh as Ginny makes a frustrated noise. There is a startlingly large part of her that wants to say yes, to sneak out at night and drink until she forgets who she is and what her responsibilities are. As she opens her mouth to say as much, her real answer comes bursting into the room. 

“Hermione! Hermione, I’ve cracked it, I’ve got it,” Harry says, breathless. 

“Oh that’s wonderful Harry, really wonderful!” She cries, genuinely thrilled beyond belief. “And you’ve done it so soon! You’ll have so much time to practice!” 

Harry and Ron look at each other, and her happiness immediately fizzles out.

“Well that’s the thing, ‘Mione…” Ron begins.

“I haven’t actually got that far. I need your help.” 

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t love being asked for help, didn’t love being the person people came to when they needed help, and the desire to be that person for people overwhelmed all other urges. She stands, pulling her bookbag up with her. She turns to Fred and George (but mostly Fred). 

“See you tomorrow? If Lee’s spell works?” 

✶✶✶. 

They set up camp in the library, each taking a stack of books relating to some area of magic that could possibly help Harry breathe underwater. She’s reading slower than she’s ever done in her life, her eyelids heavy and her thoughts roaming everywhere but here. As the clock inches ever closer to 7:30, Ron begins looking up at her, watching her like a hawk. After fifteen minutes of his scrutiny, she drops her book on the desk, startling Harry. 

“What, Ronald? What do you want?” Her voice is more cutting than she intends, and when his face drops ever so slightly she starts to feel guilty.

“What were you doing with Fred? Y’know, in that picture?” Ron has never seemed smaller or more scared to her, and she knows that this moment will haunt her.

“We were just dancing. It was nothing.” She grabs for the book again.

“It didn’t look like nothing.” 

“He was trying to cheer me up after _you’d_ put in your best effort to ruin my evening.” Ron blanches.

“I’m sorry.” Her stomach lurches. Had Ron Weasley actually apologised to her? She looked across to Harry, who looked exactly as taken aback as she felt.

“It’s fine, Ron, honestly. Make it up to me by figuring out how to save Harry.”

Before she returns to reading her book she catches a glimpse of Ron beaming at Harry, who throws him a thumbs up.

✶✶✶

She sleeps soundly that evening. So soundly, in fact, she’s uncharacteristically groggy as they tromp around the loch to Hogsmeade. “What the hell’s he doing?!” Ron sneers, several planes of existence away from her. 

“Practicing, I s’pose,” Harry says glumly. “‘Mione, you wouldn’t happen to know what he’s doing?” The question bounces off her, dropping lamely into the cold air. Harry nudges her, and she looks his way. 

“Hermione?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t know what Krum’s doing, do you?” He nods towards the loch, where, lo and behold, Viktor is half-naked and waist deep in the chilly waters. 

“Harry you know that even if I did know I couldn’t tell you.” She continues to stare at him as they wander along, trying to figure out exactly what his plan was. Of course if she did figure it out, there was no way she could outright tell Harry, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t give him some hints that might point him in the right direction… 

Hogsmeade is, as usual, jam-packed with students, though now Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students intermingle with the usual cast of Hogwarts characters. As they plod along the high street, she catches a glimpse of two very tall redheads entering the Three Broomsticks pub.

“You two go ahead, I’ve just realised there’s something I need to do.” Harry and Ron look between each other, baffled. “Give Snuffles my best and tell him that I’ll try to send him an owl with some more food.” 

She dives into the Three Broomsticks as soon as they pass it, heading straight for the bar to give herself enough time to seek out Fred and George. She orders and gazes around the pub. Madam Rosmerta, the beautiful and no-nonsense barkeep, hands her an overfull stein and she takes off in the direction of the corner Fred and George have tucked themselves away in. 

They’re seated on the same side of the table, hunched over a piece of parchment, whisper-arguing. She sets her cup down on the table to announce her arrival, and George immediately slams the tip of his wand down onto the parchment, vanishing it. 

“Do I want to know? She asks, sliding into the empty chair across from them.

“Better if you don’t.” Fred winks at her, and something flutters in her stomach.

“What can we do you for?” George asks. Hermione sips her drink.

“Am I not allowed to simply spend time with my friends?” She asks over her the head of her butterbeer. Both twins stare at her. “Fine. I need some advice.” 

“Hermione Granger needs our advice?”

“Quick, George, check outside, are pigs flying?” George dramatically turns behind him, looking out the window with all the flair of a proper vaudevillian actor.

“I need your discretion,” she says, serious now. 

“Always.” Fred says, a little more seriously than she's prepared to deal with.

“I’m going for a swim.” 

“A—,”

“A swim, yes. And I, um, I need to go quite far underwater. For quite a long time, actually.” Fred and George look between each other, before Fred leans in.

“Hermione,” he says in hushed tones, “is that the next task? Is it in the Great Lake?” 

Behind her, several gasps as the bell above the door chimes. And then a soft, low woman’s voice: “Oh, but this is very cute.” _Fleur_. Hermione doesn’t even need to turn around to know she’s right.

“We can leave?” Fred offers, and Hermione realises her face has contorted itself in annoyance. She nods.

“Actually, Fred, I think I’m going to stay here. Look.” He cocks his head in the direction of the door, and Hermione finally deigns to look. Fleur has entered with Roger Davies – the Ravenclaw quidditch captain — and, for some reason, Ludo Bagman. She turns back to them, her eyebrow raised, but neither twin seems particularly interested in answering her unasked question. 

“C’mon, I know a good place,” Fred stands, grabs his coat, and begins shuffling out of the corner. She looks at George for just a second longer, hoping for any evidence of what he’s planning to do, before accepting it’s a lost cause and also leaving the table, butterbeer abandoned. 

He takes her out of the Three Broomsticks, leading her further along the crowded high street, the freshly-fallen snow crunching beneath her trainers. “What’re my brother and Harry up to, then?” He steers her down an alley at the very bottom hill.

“Boy stuff, I suppose,” she ad-libs. “They didn’t really say, and I had other things to deal with.”

“Ah, of course,” he says, holding the door of a ramshackle pub open, “ _other_ things.” She looks up at him, trying to check if he's serious about this pub before she potentially walks right in to a prank. 

“Good morning Aberforth,” Fred says to the barkeep, an older, bearded man, who vaguely reminds Hermione of an unwashed Dumbledore. He grunts a hello in return, setting the broom he’s holding aside.

“Two of your daisyroot draughts please,” he ushers her towards a dusty table in the second room, pressing his hand against the small of her back. She starts to feel dizzy. “Nobody comes here,” he says quietly, “though it’s Hogsmeade’s best-kept secret.” 

He returns to the bar to grab their drinks, gingerly setting hers in front of her and looking at her expectantly. She takes a sip. She’s instantly hit with the overwhelming taste of ethanol, but when she swallows it’s as if someone has planted a garden in her mouth. “Wow. That’s strong.”

“And that, Hermione, is why this is Hogsmeade’s best kept secret.” She takes another sip, feeling the alcohol blossoming warmth from her chest outwards. 

“Your hangover charm worked, then?”

“Well I feel phenomenal, but that might be because I’m sitting here with you.” Her breath catches. She regards him for a moment, wondering if now is the moment to take Ginny’s advice. “So this… swim of yours,” he continues, and she refocuses. No, it is not the moment, she has much more important issues to focus on than her relationship status. 

“He — uh, I — need to be able to breathe underwater for at least an hour. And probably be able to cast spells as well. But I did quite a lot of research last night and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything that can work, at least at H— at least at my skill level.” Fred looks bemused, and as the alcohol spreads throughout her system, relaxing her, she’s unsure why she’s even trying to keep up pretences.

“The first thing I can think of is some pretty advanced transfiguration, into a fish maybe, but you’re right, that is very much above his skill level. I mean that Summoning Charm with the dragons was impressive, but this would be a whole new level of skill.” He stops, taking a long drink.

“So you’ll help then?” She asks, sounding a touch too eager for her liking. 

“For you, Hermione, anything.”


	3. oh make some big jumps, big jumps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao guys WHAT has happened this week, i feel like im going fully insane. threw myself into writing a lot more this week because the real world fuckin sucks lol. hope you all are doing well, taking care of urselves, etc 
> 
> here's a [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CF7sER73TY&ab_channel=BeggarsUSA)

As January melts into February, Fred’s mind is quickly turned by the volume of his NEWTs course load. Even for people like Fred and George, for whom exams and graduation are more a suggestion than a hard requirement, the work is absolutely overwhelming. For the first time in all their years of school they’re forced to actively seek out time in the library, and between that and their burgeoning business, he has very little capacity for anything else.

Still, it doesn’t mean his little problem has gone away entirely. And it certainly doesn’t help that he receives a several inches long letter from his mum, reaming him for getting caught out in _Witch Weekly_ and for “embarrassing such a sweet girl like Hermione.” George snatches the letter from him and announces that he’ll return it, framed, on his and Hermione’s wedding day. 

On the first Wednesday of the month, Fred, George, Angelina, and a positively frazzled Katie are sequestered in a far corner of the library, Katie fretting over her History of Magic essay and the twins reading (miraculously!) about resistance to elemental hexes. 

When Katie stands to go retrieve yet another book for her already worryingly large tower, a very harried-looking Hermione dashes down the column of bookshelves their table is hidden down, practically skidding to a stop in front of them. 

“Please can I — can I sit here?” She asks, shifting her books between her arms so she can brush her hair back behind her ears. 

Katie, shocked out of her academic trance, stares lamely at Hermione, before composing herself enough to squeak out a quick “Of course you can.” 

Hermione sets her stuff down on the table across from George, directly next to Fred. “It’s Viktor’s… _fan club_ …” she begins, before sighing angrily, “that was my leg you just kicked there, George.” Angelina laughs. “They won’t leave him alone and since all he wants to do is watch me study, there’s this constant buzz of frivolity around me at all hours!” She waves her hounds around her head as if batting away flying bugs.

“You wanted to avoid a buzz of frivolity so you came to us?” Fred asks, grinning. Hermione looks bashful.

He’s trying to maintain a semblance of self-discipline in all this. He knows he shouldn’t get his hopes up, knows that between him and Krum there’s no sane woman alive who’d pick him. Yes, he can make Hermione laugh, and yes, he can spar with her intellectually on a level few others around them can, but he’s still Fred _Weasley_ , dressed in tattered hand-me-downs and constantly struggling against being the unchosen laughing stock of the school. And he’s also Fred Weasley, sibling to Ron Weasley, his fool of a brother who had only realised the extent of his feelings _after_ Fred had. And even though he knows there’s nothing he can do about either his or his brother’s feelings, he still feels an overwhelming sense of obligation to Ron as his older brother. And so when Hermione blushes and flutters her eyelashes at him, his heart actually, physically aches. 

“I don’t think you’re frivolous at all,” she says, opening up a comically large dragonhide book. George finally lands a kick on his shin, and he looks up at his brother, whose eyes are twinkling. 

He leans in closer to Hermione, practically whispering in her ear, “And what should we do if Krum comes searching for you?” She grimaces, looking like it’s the one question she’d rather remained unasked. 

✶✶✶

They fall into an easier routine over the next few weeks of term, Hermione seeking him out — or, _them_ , rather, when George and the others are around, though she always does choose to sit closer to him than anyone else — when Krum’s enthusiasts get to be a bit much. He even chances it by sitting a bit closer to her, Ron, and Harry at breakfast one morning, totally unprovoked. 

Moments after he sits, a swarm of owls begin circling overhead, dropping letter after letter on Hermione. 

“What on earth—?” Hermione ask, taking a letter from the grey owl, opening it, and starting to read. “Oh really!” she sputters, her face as red as the Gryffindor scarf she’s got draped around her neck.

“What's up?” asks Ron.

"It's—oh how ridiculous—,” She thrusts the letter at Harry, and Fred peers over from across the table to read the words: 

> YOU ARE A WICKED GIRL. 
> 
> HARRY POTTER DESERVES BETTER.
> 
> GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM MUDBLOOD.

“They're all like it!” says Hermione desperately, opening one letter after another. “'Harry Potter can do much better than the likes of you... ' 'You deserve to be boiled in frog spawn... ' Ouch!”

She opens the last envelope, a green paste exploding all over her hands. 

“Undiluted bubotuber pus!” Fred says, picking up the envelope between two fingers, twisting it around for George to see, who nods in confirmation.

“Ow!” cries Hermione, tears starting in her eyes as she tries to rub the pus off her hands with a napkin. It’s useless, her fingers are already covered in sores. Fred jumps up, grabbing Hermione by the backs of her elbows and pulling her up from her own seat. “Alright, up, up, let’s get you to the hospital wing,” he says, hoisting her up. 

He can hear Hermione trying not to cry as they make their way up to the second floor. He’s got his arm around her shoulder, and the wolf whistle that comes from somewhere behind him doesn’t escape his notice. 

“And remember, ‘Mione, when anybody asks what’s going on, you tell them they should see how the other guy looks.” She looks up at him and he winks. 

It’s like all the stars in the galaxy have aligned when she laughs. 

“Oh what have you done to this poor girl?” Madam Pomfrey demands when they enter the hospital wing. 

“Nothing, honestly!” 

"It doesn't look like nothing," she goads.

“It’s not his fault, it was a letter someone sent me,” Hermione says quickly. 

“A letter?” Pomfrey looks eminently concerned. 

“It’s — it’s nothing. An accident.” It’s obviously not enough to assuage Pomfrey’s unease entirely, but it seems to create enough of a barrier that she doesn’t push further. 

She makes quick work of Hermione’s hands, covering them in a thick ointment and bandaging them up, sending her on her way with spares to rewrap her hands later. 

Fred wonders how many times Hermione has been in here in her Hogwarts career, how many times she’s been injured because of someone else’s actions, because she’d taken the fall for someone else. Too many times, he concludes. Far too many times. 

Hermione stares at the bandages on her hands, looking vaguely horrified as she stands up from the bed. Her eyes are ringed red, and he knows it’s not just because of the painful sores on her hands. 

“He’s my best friend,” she says, apparently to her bandages. “He’s _only_ my best friend.” 

“That’s not a good story, though, is it?” 

“Oh why does everything need to be a good story? Why can’t it just be enough that Harry is a good person with friends who care about him? Why does there have to be some torrid love affair?” 

He grins wickedly at her as he tugs on her yet again to get her out of the hospital wing. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t want a torrid love affair?” 

She’s blushing when she looks up at him. 

“Don’t you have a class to be in?” She examines her hands once more. 

“Oh, I’m doing something much more important right now.”

“What’s that?”

“Cheering you up.” 

✶✶✶

He drags her outside with only the faintest of protests from her. He can hear her teeth chattering as they navigate their way down the precarious path. He pulls out his wand, tapping her shoulder with it. 

“ _Subcalorus_.” Immediately, Hermione seems to relax. 

“What was that?”

“A spell George and I invented. Over the summer we’d been drinking quite a lot with Bill and Charlie, and realised how great it’d be to be able to have a beer jacket whenever, wherever, without the hangover.” Hermione stretches her arms out to her side, as if she were actually wearing a jacket. 

“But surely a traditional warming spell would work just fine?” 

“Well yes and no. If you’re wanting to whip out your wand every time — assuming you have a wand, or are even allowed to do magic with it — then yes, a warming spell is fine. But what about if you’ve got seven underage wizards in your house and you haven’t got the money to buy more sweaters or keep the heating going?” Hermione’s face falls, and he speaks quicker so as not to become an object of her pity. “Well in a case like that it might just be easier to pass some sweeties off to each of your darling kids, and voila, the kids get sweets _and_ warmth. But a traditional warming spell can’t be affixed to physical material as well as this one, its longevity is weakened the minute you tether it to some corporeal.”

“You’re amazing,” is all she says. He grins. 

“Anyways that’s not what I wanted to show you, c’mon.” 

He leads her down to the Great Lake, not necessarily because what he’s intending on showing her is linked to anything geographical, but because at this time of day it’s probably the one place on the castle grounds that actually affords some degree of privacy. It’s not that he’s opposed to an audience — in fact, he thrives off of audience support — but he’s a little shaken by the _Witch Weekly_ controversy and he doesn’t want to inadvertently make things worse while trying to cheer her up.

He stops at the shore, the small waves of the loch lapping against his boots. He positions himself like a ringmaster at a circus, the loch his stage, hoping that the posturing will make him look braver than he feels in this moment. 

“Okay, sit there,” he points to a tree with gnarled roots just a few metres from him. She pulls her scarf off from around her neck and sets it on one of the larger roots before dropping down onto it. “Now watch this.” He mutters the incantations he’s practiced a million times with George. 

It works _so_ much better than he’d planned. 

Fireworks burst forth from his wand, an explosion of choral music following shortly after. They really were the best fireworks he and George had ever managed, the brightest of blues, greens, pinks and purples, whirling and dodging one another in the air above the loch. 

First, they explode into a shower of glittering flowers, before they paint into the air a burning outline of a witch in a ballgown and a wizard, who, after bowing to her and taking her hand, leads her in magnificent waltz, all the while the chorus continues its melody. 

When the fireworks end in a shower of red and gold and a choral crescendo, he turns to look at Hermione. 

She’s covered her mouth with both of her bandaged hands, but from the light in her eyes he can tell this has had exactly the effect on her that he wanted.

She launches herself at him. Before he can fully register what’s happening (though he is quick to wrap his arms around her waist, like it’s an instinct), she is peppering kisses across every inch of his face. 

“Brilliant! Brilliant! You’re completely brilliant!” She says between kisses, and he doesn’t even mind that some of the ointment on her hands is smearing onto his jumper. 

Then, as quickly as she’d flung herself at him, she’s jumping away from him, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder. “Viktor,” she whispers. He turns to look behind him and, yes, there he is, clear as day. It’s unlikely that he’d have seen them yet — he’s nearly a half mile away along the perimeter of the loch — but he’s dressed in his athletic gear, clearly on a run, and it can’t be long until he’ll reach them.

“I—,” Hermione starts, but Fred puts up his hand and forces a smile onto his face. He presses a kiss to her temple.

“I’ll see you later, ‘Mione.” 

And so he trudges back up to the castle, not the least embittered.

✶✶✶

February passes slowly, made worse by the inescapable sense of anxiety the Gryffindors are feeling about the upcoming tournament task. It’s not that Harry has ever been particularly transparent about what it is that he does with himself, but when so much of their collective pride is dependent on him not cocking it all up, his characteristic silence becomes a cause for worry. 

To Fred’s delight, Hermione starts spending a noticeably larger portion of her time with him. When Alicia takes her by the arm one morning and asks her if everything is okay, she seems to realise for the first time just how much time she’s been spending around them, before immediately brushing Alicia off (“I can’t talk about quidditch all the time!”). George looks at him, implicitly asking the same question he had for himself — is she bored of Harry and Ron, or Krum? 

She corners him as he and George are leaving dinner one evening, backing him into an empty corridor off the Grand Staircase. George, ever the gent, merely calls “see you upstairs Forge!” and takes off with Angelina. 

“You know, Hermione, if you wanted to disappear with me down a darkened corridor you can always just ask. I’ll clear my whole schedule.” She turns bright red, glancing around her as she seems to come to terms with how suggestive the whole situation looks — he wishes he could save this image of her forever.

“That’s not —,” she jerks her head to look behind her, “Oh damn it all. Follow me.” She grabs his hand, taking off further down the corridor. Fred, nothing if not brave, tangles their fingers together, smirking when she briefly looks down at their intertwined hands. 

He has a lot of things he wants to say to her, pleas that are bubbling just below the surface of his self control. In many ways, he’s grateful that the time they’ve spent together has largely been in groups, because he’s not sure he trusts himself to behave around her. These feelings he has for her are so different to the feelings he’s had for anyone else before. With Alicia it was something more superficial, more about exercising teenage hormones gone haywire than anything else, and who better to work through that with than a friend? With Hermione there’s something so much more intense about it all. He knows that she’s being crushed under a thousand different sources of pressure and even though there’s an animal part of him screaming that he should lay it all out there, he absolutely refuses to be yet another source of stress for her. So he watches his tongue.

She pulls him into an empty classroom, releasing his hand as she closes the door, holding her wand to it and muttering incantations too quiet for him to hear.

“Now this is much more my speed,” he says, raising his eyebrow at her as he heaves himself up onto a desktop.

“It’s Rita Skeeter. She’s somehow listening in on conversations even though she’s banned from the castle. I need to be careful.”

“And I thought you were just decrying torrid affairs! What will she think when she finds out Hermione Granger, flirt extraordinaire, is locking doors and casting silencing charms in a room with an older man?” She laughs in spite of what appears a very earnest attempt to look cross with him.

“It’s about Harry.” Fred grabs his chest dramatically.

“Another man, how you wound me!” She pushes herself up onto the desk opposite, her legs dangling freely below her. Despite the visible tension in her shoulders and her neck, she looks more comfortable than he’s seen her in years. 

“We’re getting close to the next task, have you…?” 

They had. It had taken him and George hours of research, but they had finally done it. In between haranguing Bagman for their money, the indefatigable march of their coursework, and their ongoing product research and development, they had somehow found the solution to Harry’s problem. He relays as much to Hermione, whose eyes widen.

“Gillyweed? But how can he possibly get some, isn’t it rare?”

He reaches into the front pocket of his robes, pulling out a minuscule green vial. “Got Lee to knick it from the potions store during his detention.” 

She hugs him, and he can feel her hot breath on his ear. He suppresses a shiver. Her lips brush against his cheek, soft and warm. 

He’s always thought self-control is overrated anyways.

He turns his face into hers, catching her lips. He can feel her tense in shock, but in an instant the shock passes and she’s leaning into it, grabbing him by the collar with both hands to pull him closer to her. He wraps a hand around her face, trying to eliminate all the remaining space between them, desperation taking over.

She actually whimpers, and he’s never been more proud of anything in his life. He grabs her around the waist and heaves her upward so she’s straddling him, her knees resting on the desk beside his thighs. She tangles her fingers in his hair, tugging slightly, and suddenly he’s giving serious consideration to flipping her over, pinning her down, and never letting her leave.

He’s not sure if it’s seconds or hours that pass before she pulls away, but when she does his head feels full, his chest heaves and his stomach performs an impressive acrobatics routine. She leans her forehead against his, her breath waves crashing across his face. She smells like vanilla cream and peppermint tea and he doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want the moment to end. She puts her hand on his cheek, and the gesture is so soft, so affectionate he wants to melt into it. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says after a quiet moment. Eyes still closed, he nods. He knows where this is going: she’s going to turn and leave, he’ll sit in this dark room for another ten minutes while he recomposes himself, and then he’ll leave too, seeing her again upstairs where they’ll both pretend this is completely normal, even though it’s tearing him up inside and he can’t even _guess_ what she’s feeling about all this. She leans forward to kiss him again and he doesn’t stop her. “Thank you for this,” she whispers, pressing the hand that’s carrying the vial of gillyweed to his chest. All he can do is nod, still not opening his eyes. 

He can hear her bookbag sliding off the desk, leather on wood, and he looks up in time to watch her go. 

✶✶✶

“Oh this is no use,” Hermione says. “Who on earth wants to make their nose hair grow into ringlets?”

“I wouldn't mind,” he says. “Be a talking point, wouldn't it?”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione look up. He and George have just emerged from behind some bookshelves, obviously scaring them. “What’re you doing? Thought you’d figured everything out, Harry?” Harry glances at Hermione, who is looking straight at Fred.

“Yeah, I have, we’re just trying to figure out how to… overcome one of the obstacles I might face.” 

“Uh-huh,” George says, peering at the open charms book Ron is allegedly reading. 

“What're you two doing here?” Ron asks, slamming his book shut. 

“Looking for you,” Fred says. “McGonagall wants you, Ron. And you, ‘Mione.”

“Why?” asks Hermione, looking surprised. 

“Dunno... she was looking a bit grim, though,” says George.

“We're supposed to take you down to her office,” says Fred. Hermione stands. 

“We'll meet you back in the common room,” Hermione tells Harry. “Bring as many of these books as you can, okay?”

“Right,” says Harry uneasily.

George skilfully steers Ron ahead of Fred and Hermione, beckoning him forward with quidditch chat. Fred’s stomach jerks. He’d been avoiding spending time completely alone with her since their encounter last week, and he’s not sure how to approach being alone with her now. She slows their pace, watching as Ron and George move further and further away from them. 

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, and Fred chances a peek at her. She’s blushing intensely. 

“When are you _not_ thinking, Hermione?” 

“A lot lately, it would seem.” She sighs. “When I was younger I wasn’t exactly popular. I know that’s probably glaringly obvious, given, well,” she waves her hands up and down her body as if she’s putting herself on display as evidence of her unpopularity. All Fred can think is how beautiful she is. “I spent a lot of time alone, and when I wasn’t alone I spent a lot of time being treated rather badly by people, which has meant that now I’m still quite scared of people — or, not scared of people, per se, but scared of being abandoned by people. And right now I’m in this position where it feels like for the first time in my life people actively want to be around me, and I’m so scared that if I say or do anything even slightly wrong this life I’ve built for myself will come crashing down around me. And with Viktor the stakes really aren’t so high because in a couple months time he’ll go back to Bulgaria and that’ll be that. Nothing in my life really revolves around him, and I don’t imagine that it ever will. But with you? Oh it’s so much more terrifying because you mean so much to me. And not just you, your whole family, and even if there’s this thing that I want so, _so_ badly, that I’m almost desperate for, there’s just so much risk associated with it that I don’t rationally feel like I can do anything about it.” 

By the time she stops talking Fred feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the world. They’ve nearly reached McGonagall’s office and Ron and George are slowing down so he needs to be extraordinarily careful about how he says what he’s about to say. “I hear you. But what if we didn’t need to make it life or death right out of the gate? What if — and I know this may not yet be a word in your vocabulary so I’ll introduce it to you now — what if we just try something casual?” She laughs at him, a bright, tinkling laugh that seems to light up the whole corridor. 

“Casual,” she looks him in the eyes for the first time all day and he forgets where he is. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He laughs too.

“Look, you go in and get your bollocking from McGonagall, and then I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? Before the next task?” She huffs out a laugh, still looking surprised at herself. 

“Yeah, yes, of course.” He reaches out, rubbing her upper arm. She bites her lip, offering a smile before turning and walking through the door to McGonagall’s office. 

✶✶✶

“Stop moping!”

“I am not moping!” 

“She’s probably just down with Harry, you can’t be everybody’s first priority!” Next to George, Angelina laughs.

“George’s right, Fred, I wouldn’t think too much of it.” 

Ludo Bagman’s voice echoes around them, announcing that the champions will have one hour to find something that has been taken from them, something they can’t live without.

“Wonder how the Firebolt will fare underwater?” Fred whispers to George, who laughs. The cannon sounds and the entire loch is engulfed in the sounds of raucous cheering. Krum and Fleur are the first to dive in, followed shortly by Cedric, and then Harry, who seems instead to tumble into the water. 

The cheering declines to a normal conversational din within minutes of Harry falling into the water, and all around him Fred can hear people speculating on what things have been taken. 

“I reckon you’re right with the Firebolt, Fred,” Katie Bell says, sitting down and handing a large silver flask to Lee, who takes a long swig. 

“I dunno, I think it’d have to be something more significant. I mean a Firebolt is cool, sure, but Harry’s loaded, isn’t he?” Lee says, passing the flask to George.

“Sure but it was a gift, wasn’t it? And he doesn’t seem to get many of those, save mum’s jumpers.” Fred snatches the flask out of George’s hands when he goes for a second sip. 

“Maybe it’s one of mum’s jumpers down there,” Fred says.

“Maybe it’s something more esoteric,” Angelina says, gazing out at the loch. “Maybe they have to solve a puzzle to see what trait matters most to them.”

“No way, that’s much too clever for these meatheads. I bet they’ve had their wands taken,” says Lee. Angelina and Katie both turn on him, systematically rebuking his guess, and it’s not long before Fred and George jump in to rip the piss out of him just because they can. 

Their drinking and conversation is interrupted moments before the hour mark by Krum dragging himself out of the water —

“He’s got someone! He’s got someone with him!” Alicia cries, pointing at Krum, who is indeed dragging someone’s unconscious body out of the water. 

“Oh my god,” Katie says, her hands flying to her mouth. “That’s Hermione Granger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also i don't really post loads of harry potter stuff (or anything anymore, i mostly lurk now) but if you wanna hang on tumblr i'm [here](https://arethainparis.tumblr.com/)


	4. she got the moon in her eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCcEjZQQNjo&ab_channel=Eagles-Topic)

She is very cold and very wet.

She is very, very cold and very, very wet.

“Are you okay?” Viktor grunts at her as he drags her from the Great Lake, ultimately deciding that letting her walk is too great a hassle and lifting her up, bridal style. She pushes wet hair from her face and takes stock of her situation. Her teeth are chattering, and her socks are uncomfortable, but she is, as she tells him, fundamentally fine.

He succeeds at bringing them to the platform that appears to host both the officials and a good deal of the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff houses, and they are each swarmed by people. Somebody puts a thick towel over her, tapping her with a wand and casting a warming and drying spell, before forcing her down into a chair where Madam Pomfrey examines her thoroughly.

When at last she is left alone, she gazes around the platform. Cedric Diggory and a very shell-shocked Cho Chang are seated at the opposite end of the platform, holding each other very closely. Fleur sits next to Madame Maxime, her face flecked with abrasions of some sort. She leans over to Viktor: “Did Fleur win? Where’s her sister?”

“No. She forfeited. Gabrielle is still in the lake.” Hermione gasps.

Seconds later, the clock ticks round to an hour, and Hermione’s heart sinks —

“Where’s Harry?” she asks Viktor, but he is engaged in a deathly serious and very quiet conversation with Karkaroff. She steps to the edge of the platform, peering in, as if there is any chance at all of seeing him.

As she’s staring into the depths, a wet mop of ginger hair surfaces, followed shortly after by the white blonde head she recognises as belonging to Gabrielle Delacoeur. The Gryffindor supporters above her head explode. As soon as they are foisted onto the platform, Harry is ejected at great speed from the loch, landing with an unnerving crack on the decking.

Hermione breaks into a run, throwing her arms around him. She turns to Ron, hugging him, too, although she is unsure why, except that this has all been such a painful shock to the system that she needs some human comfort. Her front is wet again from contact with them both, but she doesn’t care.

“Where did Krum place?” Ron asks when she pulls back. She frowns, looking out at the loch rather than meet his gaze.

“Second, I think. Or at least he successfully completed the task second, I don’t know what the judges will award him.”

The answer is not very much. Cedric comes in a clean first, and despite finishing after the allotted time, the judges award Harry second place for “moral fibre.” Viktor comes in third, rounded out by Fleur, whose face is twisted by disappointment. Hermione almost feels bad for her.

The Champions and the people they rescued are allowed to leave first, and Viktor is quickly swept away in the direction of the Durmstrang ship by Karkaroff. She finds herself relieved. Last night she had resolved to make it clear to Viktor that they could be friends and nothing more, but in light of him designating her the singular person at Hogwarts he found important, and then promptly losing the task, she’s not sure if now is the kindest moment. So, she takes both Harry and Ron by the arms and resolves to put it out of her head for now.

They are all elated, so much so that Ron doesn’t take even a single swipe at Hermione for being Viktor’s “thing.” They each go up to their respective dormitories to change, and before she’s even finished drying her hair, she can hear a burst of voices and music in the common room. She sits on her bed for a moment, a wave of panic washing over her. Crookshanks curls up in her lap, mewling, and she brushes his hair back from his face. Will they all hate her for being Viktor’s treasured thing?

A knock on the door. She doesn’t move, as if her stillness is a camouflage.

“Hermione?” Ginny’s voice calls. Footsteps creak against the floorboards, and then she appears in front of her. “Harry asked me to come check up on you, everybody’s waiting for you.”

“For me?” She asks, tying off her braid.

“Yeah, ‘course. Everybody wants to know what it was actually like, and Ron’s down there lying his ass off. Lavender and Parvati are patrolling the bottom of the staircase, presumably so they can be the first to jump you and ask you about Krum.” Ginny offers her her hand, and Hermione takes it, pulling herself off the bed. “And if your head hurts at all, mind the pumpkin juice down there, I think my brothers have already gotten to it.”

Parvati and Lavender do indeed accost her, taking her by the arms and steering her towards the couch where they pepper her with questions like “what does he smell like?”, “is he really as strong as he seems?”, and “isn’t that just the most romantic thing ever?” She squirms in her chair, desperately seeking an out. It comes in the form of two hands grabbing her shoulders.

“Sorry ladies, I need to steal Miss Granger for some very important business.” They each look shocked before descending into giggles, and Hermione takes it as her chance to run.

She’s taken aback, however, when she realises that it’s George, not Fred, who has come to her rescue. She thanks him, following him to the makeshift snack table, but he waves her off.

“I don’t really care if you have to talk to them about what colour Krum’s left molar is or whatever they’re fascinated by, I’m just here to tell you that you should follow the fairies.” He hands her a dangerously full glass of pumpkin juice.

“Sorry?” she asks.

“You heard me,” he says with a wink, before brushing past her to return to his friends.

Hermione backs up against the table to give herself a view of the room. It’s as she suspected: no Fred, so whatever this fairy nonsense George was on about was being cooked up in some way by Fred. That’s good information, it tells her two things: firstly, that she needs to be very careful over the next couple of hours, and secondly, that whatever Fred thinks about that last task, he doesn’t hate her. ( _Yet_ , says the voice in her head that exists solely to torment her.)

She sips her pumpkin juice, and the taste of rum is unmistakable. She scrunches up her face as it burns the back of her throat. At the start of this year, one of the seventh years had asked her why she seemed to have a problem with all other types of rule breaking but drinking. Truthfully, she didn’t have an answer except that even she knew there were some cultural conventions that it wasn’t worth her time to struggle against. So she drinks, and she doesn’t make a fuss of it.

Something flickers by the entrance vestibule. It’s so quick, she’s not certain her paranoid brain hasn’t made it up until it flickers again. She sets her cup down behind her, checks to make sure nobody is paying attention to her, and walks towards the light.

When she comes within inches of it, not yet close enough to make out its form, it disappears, reappearing several feet closer to the portrait hole. Her feet follow it before her brain does, and soon she’s chasing it down the Grand Staircase. The castle is unnervingly quiet for a Saturday afternoon, although she supposes that most of the other houses are up to exactly the same antics as the Gryffindors.

The light takes her out towards one of the rear cloisters, one she’s rarely ever in because it’s usually so eerily quiet. The light hovers near a window that overlooks the Great Lake and she reaches out for it, only to have it extinguish in her hands. But the light isn’t gone. It multiplies, expanding all around her, the flagstones awash in golden amber light. She turns to watch it grow, and her breath catches.

Fred.

His eyes are dark, his pupils blown wide. He looks _dangerous_.

He clears the distance between them in two long strides, forcing her backwards, planting his hands on her waist to press her against the wall and oh. She didn’t know she could feel like _this_. His hand leaves her waist to cup her face, pulling it upwards. He runs his calloused thumb along her bottom lip and she forgets how to breathe.

When he kisses her, it’s not sloppy and needy like before, like they’ve only got so much time before their bubble pops. This time, it’s slow and deliberate, like Fred controls everything in this moment. The hand on her face trails down her side, down her waist and hips, around the back of her thigh, and then with shockingly little effort he’s lifting her off her feet, guiding her legs around his waist. She pulls away from him, gasping for air, and he kisses her face, her throat, her collarbone, anywhere he can reach.

There is a non-zero chance, she thinks, that she won’t survive this.

He walks them to the window ledge, places her down on it, sucking hard on her lower lip for good measure (she is definitely not going to survive this).

And then he steps back.

Her chest heaves as she fights to regulate her breathing. His wand is out and he murmurs something she doesn’t quite catch over the sound of her own racing thoughts. All the lights snuff out, leaving them lit by nothing but the pale white glow of the moon.

“See you ‘round, Granger.”

He walks away, hands shoved in his jeans pockets.

The air floods back into her lungs with a gasp.

  
  


✶✶✶

The combination of teenagers and alcohol is a lethal combination even within the confines of the wizarding world, Hermione soon learns. She watches Ron drunkenly regale Lavender, Parvati, and several fifth year girls with the story of how he personally fought off the merpeople and she doesn’t even have the slightest inclination to tell him off. Elsewhere, Harry, Lee, Angelina, Fred, and George are in a heated argument about quidditch, while Ginny and Katie moan about the horrors of growing up in a household with brothers. Hermione, for her part, leans against the biggest couch in the room, just enjoying the warmth and sedation.

It’s the moments like these that Hermione likes best; with or without the booze, the chance to sit surrounded by people she cares deeply for, feeling safe and protected, and unencumbered by the burdens of her life. She doesn’t feel particularly compelled to talk, just gazes around the room or sits with her eyes closed, occasionally catching snippets of conversations but under no pressure to engage outwith her comfort zone. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that Fred and George’s spiked pumpkin juice has ratcheted her stress levels down to far below their normal altitude.

“Hermione!” Alicia calls, wobbly on her feet, clutching a bottle of Firewhiskey from god only knows where. “Hermiiiiione, what’s it like kissing Viktor Krum?” A significant portion of the common room falls silent and Hermione becomes very aware of her inebriation.

“Alicia!” Angelina cautions.

“Uh,” Hermione starts awkwardly.

“Oh come on, surely you’ve kissed him!” Alicia says, stumbling her way towards Hermione.

“Well, yes, yes I have.”

It’s true, she had. It had only been very briefly at the end of the Yule Ball, and it hadn’t exactly been anything to write home about, but she had. She hears Lavender hushing Ron behind the couch.

“So what was it like? He’s so strong, I bet it’d be wonderful.”

“I’ve had better,” Hermione says, and Ginny snorts. Out of the corner of her eye she can see George nudging Fred. She makes eye contact with Harry, who looks confused. In her impaired state, she doesn’t even care that she’ll probably have to explain this to him at some point.

“Wow, must be some guy to compete with _Viktor Krum_ ,” Alicia says dreamily.

“In a sense.” Her eyes flicker to Fred, who is looking more smug than should be humanly possible.

“Who do you think is the best shag in the tournament?” Katie wonders aloud, seemingly forgetting she’s sitting within inches of one of the champions.

“Harry,” say Fred and George in unison to a chorus of laughter.

“Oh I bet it’s Cedric Diggory,” Alicia says.

“Eh. He’s alright,” says Angelina, and Katie gasps, her hands flying to her mouth. “Oh yeah, like, last year.” Katie’s head rolls back as she laughs.

“I’d still go with Krum. Regardless of what Hermione says,” Lavender says, with a bit more spite than is strictly necessary.

And they’re off, like the gates have been flung open at the Grand National, everyone in the room shouting out their opinions on who the most shaggable champion is, while Harry looks like he wishes he could be literally anywhere else. Hermione stands, taking a second to steady herself on her feet before turning and leaving the room.

She makes it about five unsteady steps out of the common room before Fred catches up with her.

“I’ll speak to him later. I couldn’t do it today, not after what that task entailed,” she says. When she looks into his eyes, they’re nothing like they were before, no longer dark and heady, but twinkling and boyish.

“When I said casual, I meant casual. All in your own time.” He’s lying. He’s lying because he wants to look cool. She doesn’t respond, isn’t sure what to say.

“Am I really better than Krum?” He asks, bordering on giddy.

“I should never have said that.”

“Oh yes you should have, I feel like I could take down a whole army of trolls right about now.” He takes her hand and she doesn’t stop him, instead leaning into him, laughing as she does"

“I’ve been thinking some more.”

“When? When could you possibly have had time to think today?” He pulls her down a corridor that she knows leads to a secondary stairwell that will take them out to the cloisters.

“I’ve been thinking some more,” she repeats, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “If we’re going to try and be casual we should probably set out some ground rules.”

He laughs so loudly it echoes through the empty corridor, and before she can continue, he’s leaning down and pressing her into a hard, messy kiss. He pushes her back against the wall for the second time tonight, and she wonders if they’re going to continue doing this if she might need to learn a cushioning charm.

He kisses her so intently she wonders if he’s ever concentrated on anything as much as he’s concentrating on this. Her mind is racing, trying to catalogue everything she’s experiencing, even as she feels her knees wobble and her sense of balance falter.

He pulls back. “Your rules?” She stares at him, trying to regain her purchase in reality.

“My rules,” she repeats. It’s so hard to focus when he’s pinning her there, one arm braced beside her head. “My rules.” She shakes her head, inhaling deeply. “I think we should keep this all relatively quiet until we’re sure we know what ‘this’ is.”

He leans in, kissing the column of her throat and she swears she blacks out.

“And I think this should be a guilt-free thing. If I want to hang out with you and you want to hang out with your friends, then you should go with your friends, I don’t want you to feel beholden to me.” He moves the hand that isn’t braced against the wall to grab her waist, pulling her hips closer to his.

“You severely underestimate how much time I want to spend with you.”

When he kisses her again, she doesn’t even care that she hasn’t finished listing off her rules. She knits her fingers through his hair, dragging him down to her level. He makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds very much like a nascent moan and she stores that in her mental catalogue for later. He flattens the length of his body against hers and she is suddenly desperate to have her Time Turner again, just to replay this moment for the rest of her life.

✶✶✶

The first few weeks of their non-relationship relationship are what Hermione would describe as rosy. They manage to maintain their secrecy, sticking mostly to long walks around the castle grounds and trips to the library or empty classrooms and corridors. They do talk once about what it is that’s going on between them, but agree that they should stay the course until after the Triwizard Tournament is done, when Hermione can think clearly again. 

It takes several panic attacks and Ginny’s ongoing support before Hermione works up the courage to speak to Viktor. They pick a date — late March — and spend the preceding weeks practicing her spiel. More important to Hermione than any well-rehearsed break-up speech is how close she’s getting to Ginny. Harry and Ron remain the people she’s closest to in this world, but there’s something so comforting to her about having a _girl_ friend. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the boys, but there’s a level of emotional support she needs that she didn’t realise she was missing until she started hanging out with Ginny. 

On the appointed date, Ginny walks with her down to the very edge of the Dark Forest and the pumpkin patch where she’s asked to meet Viktor. Ginny squeezes her hands, wishing her luck before disappearing back up the hill. 

Viktor arrives several minutes before she asked him to, and she has to take several deep breaths before turning around to face him. Even though she knows she’s happy with Fred, in whatever arrangement they’ve got, there is a not insignificant part of her that is sad right now. 

She takes Viktor’s hands, takes a deep breath, and then leans fully into what she’s been practicing for days now. 

✶✶✶

The news spreads remarkably quickly, and she finds herself being informed of her massive row and eventual breakup with Viktor Krum by a group of second year Hufflepuffs who haven’t bothered to ensure she wasn’t around. 

Harry side-eyes her. “Was it really that bad?” 

Hermione laughs so loudly she arouses the attention of the girls, who immediately scatter. “Not in the least. We had a very civilised chat, agreed to continue being friends, and that was that. My invitation to Bulgaria remains open.” Harry laughs. 

“Ron will be crushed. He was really hoping for a knock-down drag-out fight so he could swoop in and rescue you.” Hermione rolls her eyes.

“He’ll get over it.”

“‘Course he will. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to take the piss out of him mercilessly until he does.” Harry’s smile is contagious, and she can’t help but laugh too. 

It’s been so long since they’ve been able to laugh like this, almost carefree, almost like kids again. When she accidentally snorts, they laugh even harder, each one almost struggling for breath. This, this she has missed.

✶✶✶

The rain beats down on the cliff face, rivulets off muddy, chalky runoff dirtying the woman’s bare feet. 

“Please, m-my family,” she attempts to say, but the water rises into her mouth and chokes off her last words.

“Wormtail, my wand — _Avada kedavra_.”

The rain slows. 

✶✶✶

The earth around Hogwarts has started defrosting, trees are blossoming, and the birds have returned to their roosts. When she’s not in class, studying, or with Harry and Ron, she’s either hanging out with Ginny or sneaking off somewhere with Fred. There’s nothing technically wrong about what they’re doing — although Ron might have a differing opinion were he ever to find out — but there’s still something exhilarating to her about it. It’s the perfect setup: all the thrills of breaking the rules with no rules broken. 

She and Ginny are sitting outside people-watching and shooting the shit one evening in late April when Ginny tells Hermione that Michael Corner, a fifth year in Ravenclaw, has asked her out and that she’d said yes. It’s great news, Hermione tells her as she folds up a letter from her mother and tucks it into her book bag, she’s always thought Michael was very clever. 

As Ginny fills her in on the details, Patricia Stimpson and a group of Hufflepuff girls and some girls Hermione thinks might be from Beauxbatons spread out on the grass several metres in front of them. 

“Did you see Fred Weasley today?” asks one of the girls who Hermione recognises as Elora Dunn. Ginny falls silent and surreptitiously pulls the hood on her jumper up, covering her flamingly red hair. 

“How do you know which is which?” Another girl asks. 

“Well obviously he’s the one _not_ sat next to Angelina,” says another girl. 

“Oh they’re both so gorgeous,” Patricia says. Hermione catches Ginny’s eye and they both collapse in laughter. 

“Hermione Granger giggling—”

“— now there’s a sight you don’t see every day.”

“C’mon then, share your joke,” Fred says as he and George approach. 

“Absolutely not. Your head is big enough as it is,” Ginny says.

“Your sister’s right,” Hermione says, glancing behind them to see if the gaggle of sixth years have at all reacted to the twins’ Beetlejuice-like arrival.

“My ego isn’t nearly as large as I deserve, if you ask me,” Fred says. “But we’ll get it there, I’m sure.”

“We’re heading upstairs to bother Angelina, fancy coming?” George asks, and Ginny shrugs. 

“May as well, my Charms essay isn’t getting written more by me staying here.” Hermione, who can’t fully disagree with that logic (even if she doesn’t like it), follows them back into the castle. 

“I've heard, dear sister, that Michael Corner has asked you out,” George says as they pass the Great Hall. 

“You’ve heard nothing of the sort,” Ginny snaps, though the blush that spreads across her freckled cheeks sells her out.

“I wouldn’t go messing around with older men, Ginevra,” Fred says without a hint of irony. Hermione folds her arms across her chest, but Ginny beats her to the punch. 

“Oh is that so, _Frederick_? Would you advise all girls to be wary of older men?”

“That’s a completely different situation,” Fred says, back-pedalling wildly.

“Is it fuck!” Ginny says indignantly. 

“Yeah, it is. For one, I’m a perfectly respectable gent whereas this Michael fella seems kind of shifty to me.”

“He— what? How do you possibly know enough about him to find him shifty? You probably didn’t even know his name until an hour ago!”

“Exactly,” George jumps in. “We know everyone worth knowing, so that’s already a mark against him.” 

They’ve come down the side entrance to the corridor that contains the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, and Fred seems particularly relieved to see the Fat Lady come into focus. 

“This is our stop,” George announces, leaning into Ginny to steer her towards the portrait. 

“Oh, of course it is,” Ginny says, bitterly sarcastic. 

“Goodbye, Ginny!” Fred says in a song-song voice, putting his hand on the small of Hermione’s back and guiding her away from the portrait hole. 

“You really should leave her be, Michael is perfectly nice,” Hermione says as he pulls her down an empty corridor. 

“No chance, she made the poor choice to be the first of my younger siblings to date someone. That is completely her fault.” He leans against the wall next to her, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. 

“What’re you up to this evening?” he asks. 

“Potions essay, Muggle Studies essay, I should probably get some Charms practice in…” she trails off, looking out the window opposite them, wondering when her coursework had started to bore her. 

“What’s your Muggle Studies essay on?” She blinks up at him.

“ _What_?” His face remains unchanged. “Oh for goodness sake, you don’t care! Just kiss me already.” He laughs, but does exactly as she commands.

“For — the — record — I — always — care — whatyouhavetosay,” he manages to get out, but she laughs, shaking her head at him. She takes his hands in hers, interlacing their fingers together as she presses a kiss to the side of his mouth. 

“Hermione?” Harry’s voice. 

Hermione jumps, moving so quickly she smacks her head against the wall. Fred, more nonchalant, always so much cooler than her, just rubs the back of his neck briefly before crossing his arms and turning to face Harry. 

“Uh, hi Harry,” Hermione says before Fred can speak. “Are you okay?” Her voice comes out too high-pitched to sound normal.

“Er — sorry,” Harry says before quickly turning around and hurrying back in the direction he’d come from. Hermione looks at Fred as if to apologise. He nods at her and she takes off down the corridor after Harry. 

“Harry! Harry!” she calls, still breathless. He slows to a stop, half-turning to face her. 

“I’m really sorry, ‘Mione, I didn’t mean to —,”

“— please don’t tell anybody —,”

“— I didn’t know —,”

“— should have been more careful —,”

“—was just coming back from Moody’s —,”

“— I’m sorry —.” 

When they finally stop cross-talking, they look at each other. She laughs, and then he does, and the tension dissipates. 

“Harry I’m so sorry. This is all so new, we wanted to be discreet about it. And I don’t want to upset anyone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry says, looking behind her at Fred. “Ron won’t find out.”

✶✶✶

In many ways, Hermione has never been so happy. She is surrounded by friends, Viktor still visits her in the library (though now he picks up his own books to read _with_ her) and her relationship with Fred has become one of the most fulfilling things in her life. It means, crucially, that Hermione has a lot more bandwidth to think about more serious things, namely the rumours of sightings of Voldemort, and the remaining Triwizard Tournament task. Her, Ron, and Harry have become increasingly reliant on Sirius’s advice, and trips to the Owlery are becoming a regular item on her schedule. 

It’s a beautiful, sunny day, and she’s hoping she’ll get to do some studying outside once Harry’s done dispatching Pigwidgeon. Harry and Ron are chatting about Sirius, about everything he could potentially tell them. Ron’s about to mention him by name when she shushes him. Somebody is climbing the steps up to the Owlery. She can hear two voices arguing, coming closer and closer.

“That's blackmail, that is, we could get into a lot of trouble for that—,”

“—we've tried being polite; it's time to play dirty, like him. He wouldn't like the Ministry of Magic knowing what he did—,”

“I'm telling you, if you put that in writing, it's blackmail!”

“Yeah, and you won't be complaining if we get a nice fat payoff, will you?”

The Owlery door bangs open. Fred and George come over the threshold, then freeze at the sight of Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

“What're you doing here?” Ron and Fred ask at the same time.

“Sending a letter,” Harry and George say in unison.

“What, at this time?” say Hermione and Fred. Fred winks at her.

“Fine — we won't ask you what you're doing, if you don't ask us,” he says.

He’s holding a sealed envelope in his hands. Hermione glances down at it, but Fred, whether accidentally or on purpose, shifts his hand to cover the name on it.

“Well, don't let us hold you up,” Fred says, mimicking a bow and pointing at the door.

Ron doesn’t move, Hermione can see the tenseness in his jaw.

“Who're you blackmailing?” he asks. The grin vanishes from Fred's face. George half glances at Fred, before smiling at Ron.

“Don't be thick, I was only joking,” he says easily.

“Didn't sound like that,” pushes Ron.

Fred and George look at each other. Then Fred says abruptly, “I've told you before, Ron, keep your nose out if you like it the shape it is. Can't see why you would, but—”

“It's my business if you're blackmailing someone,” says Ron, and Hermione moves to intervene before Ron continues pressing. “George's right, you could end up in serious trouble for that.”

“Told you, I was joking,” says George. He walks over to Fred, pulling the letter out of his hands, and attaching it to the leg of the nearest barn owl. “You're starting to sound a bit like our dear older brother, you are, Ron. Carry on like this and you'll be made a prefect.”

“No, I won't!” says Ron hotly, and Hermione huffs. 

George carries the barn owl over to the window and raises his hand to encourage it to fly off. He turns around and grins at Ron.

“Well, stop telling people what to do then. See you later.”

He and Fred leave the Owlery. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stare at one another, Hermione chewing her bottom lip. “You reckon they know something about all this?” Ron asks. “About Crouch and everything?”

“No,” says Harry. “If it was something that serious, they'd tell someone. They'd tell Dumbledore, right, Hermione?”

“Why would Hermione know?” Ron asks haughtily. She narrows her eyes at Harry, who realises his mistake. Ron seems to shake it off, though, because he continues: “I dunno if they would. They're... they're obsessed with making money lately, I noticed it when I was hanging around with them—when—you know—,”

“We weren't talking.” Harry finishes his sentence. “Yeah, but blackmail...”

“It's this joke shop idea they've got,” says Ron. “I thought they were only saying it to annoy Mum, but they really mean it, they want to start one. They've only got a year left at Hogwarts, they keep going on about how it's time to think about their future, and Dad can't help them, and they need gold to get started.”

Harry looks to Hermione, who shakes her head. “They wouldn't do anything against the law to get gold.”

“Wouldn't they?” asks Ron, looking skeptical. “I dunno... they don't exactly mind breaking rules, do they?”

“Yes, but this is the _law_ ,” says Hermione. “This isn't some silly school rule. They know they’d get a lot more than detention for blackmail!”

“Yeah but you don’t know them like I do, ‘Mione.” Harry smirks and she considers smacking him. “They seem to really be pushing their boundaries a lot lately. I dunno.” 

Hermione decides that trying to tactfully win this argument with Ron is not worth her time, so she turns to leave the Owlery. She shouts a goodbye as she descends the stairs, pulling open her planner as she goes. At the bottom of the stairs, she is grabbed on either side, with a hand closing over her mouth to stop her making any noise. 

When the hand is finally removed from her mouth, she kicks her legs, forcing the twins to put her back down. “Oh you assholes, you frightened me half to death.” 

“Well we couldn’t have you causing a ruckus and alerting ickle Ronniekins.”

“Was that letter you were sending _really_ blackmail?” she asks nervously. They look between each other in some sort of unspoken competition. Fred appears to lose, sighing at George and then turning back to Hermione. 

“Can we say it’s a need-to-know type of thing?” She eyes him for a moment. 

“Fine. What do you want me for?”

“Your unparalleled beauty, your ability to demolish an entire library in a single sitting, your quick wit. Is that enough to want you for?” Fred asks in mock upset. 

“No. Absolutely not.” 

They guide her towards a wrought iron bench just outside the castle cloisters, where Fred instructs her to sit down. “What’s going on?” Fred kneels in front of her, putting his hands on her thighs. 

“Do you trust me?” he asks, his voice softer than usual. 

“Why?” George laughs behind Fred. 

“We’ve just created a new spell. And I — we wanted to show you it.”

“What is it?” 

“It’s better if you see it first. So, do you trust me?” Hermione nods. Fred pulls his wand from his jeans pocket, and raises it to her eye level. 

“ _Hallucinor_.” 

She is swept away into a warm, cosy feeling, liquid gold surrounding her like a blanket. There are pictures: all of them are at the Burrow. It’s a beautiful summer’s day, the air smells faintly of jasmine and pine. Fred, George, Harry, Ron, and Ginny are playing a pick-up quidditch match while she reclines in a canvas beach chair with a good book. Crookshanks is curled up on her feet, purring. There’s so much laughter and no sense of impending doom, no threats on anyone’s lives. There’s nothing to do except enjoy the glorious sun on this glorious day. 

As the sun beats down on her face, she leans back in her chair, letting her book drop to the wayside. She is surrounded by people she loves, and there is nothing she has to do. She has earned a nap. The liquid gold washes over her again, and she can smell grass and wet stone. 

“What was that?” she gasps. 

“That, Miss Granger, was a daydream charm,” George answers from above Fred. 

“ _That_ is extraordinary magic.” Fred beams. 

“For that, Hermione, you get our first full scale one for free.” George says. 

“Full scale? That’s not complete?” Her mind is spinning. If that’s not the completed product they could be onto some incredibly potent magic. 

“Not the half of it. We’re aiming for a full thirty minute daydream with total lucidity.” Fred says. She stares at him, completely stunned. 

They talk her through the inventing process, punctuated by her occasional gasps or compliments. When the sun begins to move closer to the horizon, George leaves in search of Angelina. 

Red streaks the sky, casting the clouds in a brilliant fuchsia. She leans her head on Fred’s shoulder as he talks, feeling his warmth and inhaling his comforting smell. He plays with her hand, tracing the lines on her palm. As she looks out the landscape before her, she realises that this is what happiness feels like. This is what she’s been desperately seeking for so long. This is it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay hello folks. i just want to lay out a bit of this fic's raison d'etre while i've got the bandwidth to commit it to paper
> 
> basically: 
> 
> revisiting harry potter now, at the ripe old age of 22 (and balls deep in a gender history dissertation, no less) i'm shocked at how much of the series relies on unadulterated women's pain and trauma as a way to imbue moments with emotional weight. there's of course hermione's constant pain over ron in gof and hbp (grim, i think, that the first time we see hermione express any real emotional reaction to the world around her is over a boy), then there's molly weasley consistently bearing the emotional brunt of the war, lily potter, of course, literally dying to save her son, etc. etc. etc. now i don't think women's pain is a bad thing! i think women's pain is a perfectly fine thing to describe in a fictional setting, but i think it's important that it's dealt with in a feminist sense. to me, that means with solidarity and emotional intelligence. so i've been reflecting a lot on the way women are portrayed in the series and i want to use this fic as a way to exorcise some of my angst around these things. which is also really my guiding logic behind shipping fremione generally — i like the idea of a relationship for hermione that's removed from her ongoing trauma and that can help her develop with a little more emotional maturity. anyways. yes. that's the truncated version of my thinking on this (i'd love to hear your thoughts, either in the comments or [on tumblr](https://arethainparis.tumblr.com/ask)!


	5. it's a cruel summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic8j13piAhQ&ab_channel=TaylorSwiftVEVO)

You-Know-Who has returned, Cedric Diggory is dead, Harry has survived — but only just — and all the happiness has been stolen from this world.

They sit in the Great Hall, all of them, Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, and Hogwarts students alike, each looking more confused, more terrified than the last. Dumbledore is eulogising Cedric Diggory, but a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach tells Fred that Dumbledore is eulogising innocence itself. 

He stares at the back of Hermione’s head, a naive part of him hoping that if he stares long and hard enough it’ll somehow protect her like Harry’s mum protected him. Hermione is in terrible danger now, almost as significant a target as Harry himself. Fred knows a lot of magic, knows the theory better than almost anyone, which means he knows there’s nothing he can do to protect her. There will be no incantation that can keep her safe and away from this until the war is over. 

The thought makes him breathless. 

They’re still casual, whatever that could possibly at a time like this. They had been casual when he’d held her while she cried herself to sleep in the common room the night Cedric Diggory died. Casual when he’d had to literally force her to eat, to sleep, to do something more than just stare ashen-faced at books. Nobody but George had noticed these little gestures. The horrifying week between Cedric’s death and the end of term had been so fraught with other people’s traumas that scarcely a person noticed the small acts of kindness happening between the students in the castle. That sort of care had been casualised, normalised now, so even if someone _had_ noticed, they could have easily chalked it up as gentleness between old friends. 

He and George walk down to the Hogwarts Express together, uncommonly sedate.

“She’ll be alright,” George offers, and Fred looks at him. He should know by now, after seventeen years on this earth that there’s nothing he can hide from his twin. He shrugs rather than answer. “I s’pose now more than ever we need to start getting our stuff out there,” George says. 

A cynical eavesdropper might have interpreted that as a desperate plot to shake money out of people, but Fred knows what George is saying: _people need laughter_. So they set a dragon mini-firework chasing after Malfoy on the train, and it’s the first laughter either of them have heard in days, cutting through the agony like a machete in a jungle thicket. 

In their compartment, Lee gets out his portable radio and George and Angelina dance like fools (their movements don't hide the tears that Angelina cries). Fred watches their reflections in the window, trying to remind himself that softer moments like these are still possible. 

“So what’s everybody doing for their holidays?” Alicia asks, her voice hoarse from disuse. 

“My mum and dad will want to go to the Lake District, I think,” Lee says. “But I guess it all depends, now…” he trails off, the implication hanging heavily in the air. 

“We’re going to go camping,” Angelina says as George twirls her around. “You’re all welcome, though it’ll be a thoroughly non-magical affair.” Katie grimaces at the thought, and Lee laughs at her.

“What does it matter to you? You’re not even seventeen yet.”

“Katie’s under the impression that going back to the muggle world is the most dangerous thing anyone could do right now,” Angelina snaps. Fred turns his head briefly to look at Katie, who has gone white with worry. He turns back to the window, not wanting to think about just how right she is. 

“Yeah but your mum’s a witch,” Lee says to Angelina, chucking a flagon of pumpkin juice to Katie.

“That doesn’t —”

There’s a tap on their compartment window. Fred doesn’t turn around. 

“Have any of you seen Neville’s toad, Trevor? He’s gone missing again.” There are murmured nos from the group. 

Fred sees her reflection in the window pane. Even in outline she looks exhausted, her hair bushier than normal and her shoulders ever so slightly hunched.

“I’ll help you look, I was wanting to find the snack trolley anyways,” Fred says abruptly. He turns to face her. In full colour she looks like a wreck. The circles under her eyes are darker than he’s ever seen before and the crease between her eyes seems to have become permanent. 

He slides out of the compartment, brushing his fingers along the inside of Hermione’s wrist. “Which way are we looking?” She nods behind her, and he follows. “When are you coming to ours?” he asks as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, as if there’s no way they could be reasonably expected to spend any time apart.

“I haven’t been invited,” she says calmly.

“I’m surprised Ron hasn’t asked yet.” As soon as he says it, he regrets it. Ron still hasn’t got a clue about them, and Fred’s made it his singular mission to not be around Ron long enough to figure out if he’s still chasing after Hermione. 

“I guess he still thinks I’m going to Bulgaria to visit Viktor,” she says, and her voice is so tired it makes his soul ache. 

“Are you?” He suspects he may have been trying to be funny, but the words come out heavily and brimming with exhaustion. She knocks on the next compartment door, asking its occupants if they’ve seen the frog (they haven’t).

“I haven’t really thought about it. I guess since Ron hasn’t invited me I might —”

“— I’ll get mum to invite you.” She quirks her eyebrow at him, and he laughs despite himself. And then she laughs, too, and for the most fleeting of moments, everything is okay. 

✶✶✶

“Where’ve you been?” George asks, and Fred shoots him a warning glance.

“Looking for Neville’s frog, like I said.” 

“No you haven’t, Neville’s just come by here with Trevor,” Alicia says, opening up a packet of sweeties, pulling one out and lobbing it at Lee, who manages to masterfully catch it in his mouth. 

“Yeah well we were on opposite ends of the train, weren’t we? Took me ages to find him again.” “Uh-huh,” George smirks. Angelina looks between them, her eyes narrowing, and for once Fred wishes that she was slightly less perceptive.

“What does that mean?” She asks, but they both ignore her.

“Anyways, I was thinking about going to give Malfoy and his goons a bit of hell. Keen?” 

There is nothing Fred wants more in this moment than to terrorise that awful posh prick. 

They stroll down the train towards where they last saw the Slytherins.

“You reckon Katie’s right? About the muggle world?” Fred asks George when they get out of range of their friends. George’s jaw tightens, almost imperceptibly. 

“I don’t think she’s wrong.”

“But?” 

“But you’ve met Angelina’s mum, between her and Angelina I doubt there’s very much they can’t handle.” It’s an optimistic take, but George knows Angelina infinitely better than Fred does, even after nearly six years of friendship, so he takes him at his word, saying no more on the topic. 

They’re midway through their plan for turning Ginny into an unwitting product tester when they’re intercepted by Malfoy’s shrill voice just outside Hermione’s compartment. 

“Too late now, Potter! They'll be the first to go now the Dark Lord's back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first!” Fred whips his wand out, and George swears under his breath. “Well—second—Diggory was the f—”

He’s not sure who moves first, but there’s a violent blast of light and smoke emanating from their wands and choking the entire corridor. When the smoke clears, Malfoy and his oafish pals lie unconscious in the doorway. Based on the scoring on the side of the train, he and George aren’t the only ones who have blasted them. 

He steps into the compartment, by way of Malfoy’s face. “Thought we'd see what those three were up to,” he says, George following behind him. 

“Interesting effect,” says George, crouching down to get a better look at the smaller of the two half-trolls. “Who used the Furnunculus Curse?”

“Me,” says Harry.

“Odd,” says George lightly. “I used Jelly-Legs. Looks as though those two shouldn't be mixed. He seems to have sprouted little tentacles all over his face. Well, let's not leave them here, they don't add much to the decor.” He quickly looks up to Hermione, who looks like she’s desperately fighting to keep back a smile. 

He, George and Harry force Malfoy and his unconscious shit-for-brains friends out into the corridor. He waits until everyone else is seated before sliding onto the bench next to Hermione, making it seem as though he has no other choice. 

“Exploding Snap, anyone?” he asks, pulling a pack of cards from his jacket. Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, jumps from her lap lying down on the back of the seat behind him. George eyes the cat, not yet fully amenable to it after what it’d done to Scabbers last year.

They’re halfway through their fifth game when Harry dramatically sets his cards down. 

“You going to tell us, then?” he says to George, who doesn’t register the question, “Who you were blackmailing?”

“Oh,” says George darkly. “That.”

“It doesn't matter,” says Fred, shaking his head impatiently. “It wasn't anything important. Not now, anyway.” Hermione tenses beside him.

“We've given up,” says George, shrugging. “Hey, Hermione, is it true you punched Malfoy once?” Hermione, still tense, huffs out a yes, before picking up the book that sits in her lap and shoving her nose into it. 

But Harry and Ron keep asking, and after twenty minutes of pestering he gives in. “All right, all right, if you really want to know… it was Ludo Bagman.”

“Bagman?” says Harry sharply. “Are you saying he was involved in—”

“Nah,” says George gloomily. “Nothing like that. Stupid git. He wouldn't have the brains.”

“Well, what, then?” asks Ron.

Fred hesitates, looking to George before starting: “You remember that bet we had with him at the Quidditch World Cup? About how Ireland would win, but Krum would get the Snitch?”

“Yeah,” say Harry and Ron slowly. There is nothing he’d rather admit less to Hermione than his victimisation in this painfully obvious scam, but there’s nowhere to run, so he might as well grab it by the reins. 

“Well, the prick paid us in leprechaun gold he'd caught from the Irish mascots.” He can literally feel Hermione roll her eyes with her entire body next to him so he keeps his eyes glued to Harry. 

“So?”

“So,” says Fred impatiently, “it vanished, didn't it? By next morning, it had gone!”

“Well it must've been an accident, mustn't it?” says Hermione, sounding alarmingly sympathetic to Bagman. George laughs bitterly and she crosses her arms.

“Yeah, that's what we thought, at first. We thought if we just wrote to him, and told him he'd made a mistake, he'd cough up. But nothing doing. Ignored our letter. We kept trying to talk to him about it at Hogwarts, but he was always making some excuse to get away from us.”

“In the end, he turned pretty nasty,” says Fred. “Told us we were too young to gamble, and he wasn't giving us anything.”

“So we asked for our money back,” says George looking angrily out the window.

“He didn't refuse!” gasps Hermione.

“Right in one,” says Fred, trying not to make eye contact with her.

“But that was all your savings!” cries Ron.

“Tell me about it,” says George. “'Course, we found out what was going on in the end. Lee Jordan's dad had had a bit of trouble getting money off Bagman as well. Turns out he's in big trouble with the goblins. Borrowed loads of gold off them. A gang of them cornered him in the woods after the World Cup and took all the gold he had, and it still wasn't enough to cover all his debts. They followed him all the way to Hogwarts to keep an eye on him. He's lost everything gambling. Hasn't got two Galleons to rub together. And you know how the idiot tried to pay the goblins back?”

“How?” asks Harry warily. 

“He put a bet on you, mate,” says Fred. “Put a big bet on you to win the tournament. Bet against the goblins.”

“So that's why he kept trying to help me win!” says Harry. “Well—I did win, didn't I? So he can pay you your gold!”

“Nope,” says George, shaking his head. “The goblins play as dirty as him. They say you drew with Diggory, and Bagman was betting you'd win outright. So Bagman had to run for it. He did run for it right after the third task.”

George sighs and starts dealing out the cards again.

✶✶✶

All too soon, the Hogwarts Express pulls in at platform nine and three-quarters. The usual confusion and noise fill the corridors as the students begin to disembark. Ron struggles out past Malfoy & co, carrying his trunk. Fred gives Hermione’s hand a quick squeeze before she follows after Ron, Crookshanks, angrily in a carrier, in tow. Harry, however, stays put.

“Fred—George—wait a moment.” Harry pulls open his trunk and draws out a black velvet bag.

“Take it,” he says, thrusting the sack into George's hands.

“What?” says Fred, looking flabbergasted. His heart is pounding in his head, if this is what he thinks it is (and he’s not often wrong on these sorts of things) this is a massive amount of money. More money than he or anyone in his family have ever had at once, he guesses.

“Take it,” Harry repeats firmly. “I don't want it.”

“You're mental,” says George, trying to push it back at Harry.

“No, I'm not,” insists Harry. “You take it, and get inventing. It's for the joke shop.”

“He is mental,” Fred says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own.

“Listen, If you don't take it, I'm throwing it down the drain. I don't want it and I don't need it. But I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I've got a feeling we're going to need them more than usual before long.”

“Harry,” says George, his voice faltering as he weighs the money bag in his hands, “there's got to be a thousand Galleons in here.”

“Yeah,” says Harry, grinning. “Think how many Canary Creams that is.”

Fred stares at him, shaken to his core. 

“Just don't tell your mum where you got it... although she might not be so keen for you to join the Ministry anymore, come to think of it...”

“Harry,” Fred begins, but Harry pulls out his wand.

“Look,” he says emotionlessly, “take it, or I'll hex you. I know some good ones now. Just do me one favor, okay? Buy Ron some different dress robes and say they're from you.”

He leaves the compartment before they can say another word. 

✶✶✶

On the platform, George makes the rookie mistake of kissing Angelina goodbye in view of his mother. Fred and Ron snigger as their mum descends, assailing him and Angelina with questions. George goes as red as his jumper, and once Fred’s done twisting the knife, he privately vows to never make the same mistake.

✶✶✶

It’s a sunny day at the Burrow and Ron, Ginny, George, and Bill are outside playing quidditch in the garden. He ambles into the sun-splashed kitchen where his mum is reading a book with the radio on. Ron’s new dress robes sit in their packaging on the table beside her. 

“Mum?” he calls quietly, and she jumps about a mile in the air.

“Oh Merlin, you startled me! I thought you were out playing quidditch!” 

“Was. Wanted to speak to you while you’re alone.” She bookmarks her book, setting it gently on the table beneath her.

“What do you need, dear?” He slides into the wooden chair next to her, leaning it back on two legs in the way his dad hates.

“I, uh, I probably shouldn’t be the one to ask this, and if you could not tell Ron that would be great, but on the train back from school I overheard Ron speaking to Hermione Granger. She said that in light of, well, _you know_ , that she was worried about going home, about attracting attention to her parents when they can’t defend themselves. And I don’t think Ron suggested it at the time, but I thought it might make sense if we invited her over for the summer. That way she can only be traced here. Might give her a sense of security, y’know?” He returns all four feet of his chair to the ground, finally looking up to meet his mum’s gaze. Her eyes are soft.

“Oh Fred, dear, that is so thoughtful of you.” She stands up, tucking her chair in. “I’ll go get Ron to owl her right away.”

“But mum —” She gives him a knowing smile. 

“I won’t say a thing. Your secret is safe with me.” He laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i had an absurd dream last night and woke up hellbent on revamping the next ten chapters i'd written so... i'm gonna do that. also my phd stuff has gone tits-up, so if i'm a little late updating on sunday, that's why. hope you're all staying safe xxxx


	6. ive looked at clouds from both sides now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tune tune tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCnf46boC3I&ab_channel=CritiquesMaster)  
> dont roast me for picking the one joni mitchell song they use in love actually lmao

Hermione receives three letters from the Weasleys within three weeks of returning home. The first is from Ron, inviting her to stay for the summer, which she expected and had been waiting for since the minute she stepped foot in her house in June. The second is from Ginny, announcing that she’s broken it off with Michael and that she’s finally come to her senses about pursuing Harry again. The last is from Fred, and is a sprawling account of everything he’s done over the last couple of weeks, including all the ways he and George have driven their poor siblings batty. It comes with a parcel of sugar quills — her favourite. That, she wasn’t expecting, although on second thought she’s not sure why. 

Despite all their overtures of casualness, she and Fred have become remarkably close. She supposes that sounds odd, given that they are in a relationship of some sort, but she’d never really given much consideration to what a romantic relationship with someone would look like outside of the more physical aspects. And there’s something so wonderfully Fred about all of this, the excitement with which he approaches every moment of life. 

She’s been cooped up since she got home from Hogwarts, with no one bar Crookshanks and her sadness and fear to keep her company. She feels like the world has stopped turning on its axis. Fred’s letter is a reminder that not only has the world kept on turning, but that there are people out there who want her to rejoin it. 

She takes Ron’s letter down to her parents at dinnertime, and they both begrudgingly agree to let her join the Weasleys from the summer (“and you’re sure his mother won’t be put out by you staying that long?”). 

She writes immediately to Ron: 

_Mum and dad say yes, I’ll come via floo on Friday. Tell your mum thanks for the invite._

She pauses, unsure of what to write to Fred. ‘Hello Fred, I’ve been miserable and done nothing. Hope you don’t think I’m boring! Hermione.’ The thought of it all feels so hollow, like committing it all to paper makes it worse than it is. 

_Fred —_

_I’ll be at yours on Friday. Apologise in advance to George._

She stares at the space where her signature should go, unsure of what to put there. 

_Love,_

_Hermione_

✶✶✶

Her parents see her off on Friday, waking up early to catch the train with her into London. She had explained to them as soon as she’d gotten back from school that things were happening in the wizarding world that she was concerned about, that she would no longer be communicating with them by owl but by muggle post, and that that might mean things would be slower. 

She had not told them that she was going away for the summer to protect them. 

She does, however, confess that she’s seeing someone (she does this mostly in response to the guilt she feels at the realisation that her mum would be seeing her for little more than a few days this year). Her mum is thrilled, positively glowing at the news, and desperate for all the information she can get. 

Hermione is careful, reserved with the information she doles out, mostly to ensure that her mum doesn’t figure out that she’s going to be sleeping under the same roof as him for the bulk of this summer. 

Her father, mercifully, pretends he can’t hear any of their conversations, though his charade becomes much harder when they’re all on the southbound train to Liverpool Street Station. She is grateful for her dad’s ability to know when to remain silent, a gift she wishes she had inherited.

There are tearful goodbyes inside the Leaky Cauldron, and then she steps forward into the bright green flames and into a little house in Devon. 

Ginny, unfazed by her sudden appearance on the family’s fireplace, beams at her. She runs from her spot on the kitchen table, throwing her arms around Hermione’s neck. “How are you?” She takes Hermione’s hand, leaning away from her before yelling. “Mu-um, Hermione’s here!” 

It’s like the house comes alive. She can hear footsteps at every level of the house, and she can’t help but smile. Mrs Weasley is the first into the kitchen, pulling Hermione into a hug so tight it briefly deprives her of air. Mr Weasley appears behind her with a warm nod of hello. Next is Ron, who looks genuinely pleased to see her, and she hugs him, too, overwhelmed by the realisation of how much she’d missed him. Bill Weasley, the eldest Weasley son, shakes her hand enthusiastically. She turns slowly around, searching for Fred. But he’s not there.

“Where’s—” she stops herself, realising the mistake she’s about to make.

“—Harry’s still in Surrey,” Ginny says hastily, letting Crookshanks out of his carrier. The cat immediately runs out of the open door to the house, presumably to terrorise the gnomes in the garden.

“Dumbledore’s orders,” Ron says, looking unconvinced. _That’s_ a development.

“Dumbledore’s orders?” she repeats, glancing at Mrs Weasley, whose face has paled. 

“Ginny, no need to barrage Hermione with bad news all at once. Why don’t you help her get her stuff upstairs to your room?”

They go, Hermione dragging her trunk up the narrow stairwell as Ginny fills her in on everything she can that won’t draw Mrs Weasley’s ire. Though Ginny’s room is physically less comfortable than her room at home, from the minute Hermione stands in it it feels like a grand piano’s weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She feels safe.

“So what’s this about Dumbledore’s —” a loud crack interrupts her and she screams. 

The twins have appeared behind her, laughing, and she clutches her chest, heart racing. Ginny, evidently accustomed to this behaviour, rolls her eyes and sits on her bed.

“Morning ‘Mione,” George says, dropping onto the foot of Ginny’s bed. She whips round to look at Fred, who grins mischievously at her. He grabs the back of her neck, pulling her close to press a kiss to her forehead. George retches. 

No sooner has Fred leaned back from her than does the bedroom door bang open. “Heard a scream, assumed these two had shown up,” Ron says, eyes twinkling. Fred slides past her, sitting confidently on her camp bed.

“Yes, well I take it they managed to pass their apparition test, then?” she says to Ron, before turning back to the twins.

“With distinction!” George corrects. Ron takes a seat on the camp bed next to Fred, leaving her to sit on the floor next to Ginny’s rather impressive collection of stuffed animals.

“So Dumbledore’s orders,” Ginny continues, as though nothing had interrupted Hermione earlier, “are to keep Harry with the Dursleys all summer. He reckons he’ll be safer there—”

“—and from what we’ve heard the Order have got someone tailing him twenty-four hours a day.” Fred finishes. 

“The order?” Hermione asks.

“The Order of the Phoenix. It’s a group of people who fought against You-Know-Who last time, people who Dumbledore trusts now. They’ve been meeting here but it sounds like the meetings are all going to be moving to some safe house they’ve got in London," George sighs, "Shame, really, those meetings have been about the most interesting thing to happen here in years.” 

Now that she’s jumped back onto the spinning world, she realises she hasn’t gotten her sea legs back, and it’s all so disorienting. So her pessimism had been completely justified, Dumbledore is planning for the very worst. They’re going to war. 

Each of the Weasley siblings takes their turn cutting across each other to fill her in on everything. She loosely pays attention, nodding and making noises at all the appropriate moments. Her mind is a million miles away, anxiety bubbling inside her like an overfull cauldron, threatening to boil over and ruin everything around her. Her hands shake slightly and she tucks them between her knees to hide the tremor, though not before Fred catches sight and shoots her a look, which she ignores. 

She needs to start getting serious.

Her parents are in far graver danger than she had planned for in even her wildest nightmares, and she needs a contingency plan yesterday. If Dumbledore’s actions are anything to go by, she needs to work quickly and she needs to work intelligently. There can be no room for error. And, most importantly, she can’t let emotions cloud her judgement when it comes to protecting her family.

She knows exactly who she needs to talk to.

After a moment of silence where Hermione belatedly realises they had been expecting her to chime in, Ron stands up, rubbing his hands together. “Well I’m going to go get some flying in before Bill buggers off to meet you-know-who. Anyone keen?” Fred and George stand and smirk.

“Last one out there has to do all the dishes tonight,” Fred says, and with another deafening crack they’re gone. Ginny frowns at the spot where they had previously stood as Ron bolts out the door. 

“Who’s Bill meeting?” Hermione asks absently. Ginny huffs.

“Oh, lord. That’s quite the story, I’ll tell you outside so mum doesn’t hear and go berserk.” Hermione doesn’t respond, just stares at her trembling hands. 

“You alright, Hermione?” Ginny asks, lifting herself off the bed and holding her hand out to help Hermione up. 

“Yes, completely. Sorry, it’s — it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Ginny offers a weak smile.

“Yeah, I can imagine. We’ve been surrounded by it all since we got home, so I guess we’ve all forgotten how different everything has become.” Hermione nods. “You going to come out, too?” 

“I’ll be out in a minute, I just want to finish up some stuff in here first, if that’s okay?”

“Sure.” 

After Ginny is gone and she’s sure all the Weasley kids are comfortably out of earshot of the house, she goes off in search of Mrs Weasley, finding her oiling a cast iron pot in the kitchen. 

“Mrs. Weasley?” she calls. 

“Molly, dear.” Hermione smiles.

“Molly. Could I have a word?” 

“Of course you can, here, have a seat.” She pushes the chair next to her out with her foot, and Hermione slides into it, hands shaking worse now. 

✶✶✶

The sun is high in the sky and she has given up hope of being able to stay focused on her book for any extended period of time. She spreads a blanket out on the ground just outside the bounds of their chalked pitch and stretches out across it. She runs her fingers through the grass, letting the blades tickle her palms, blowing the dandelion seeds off her palm when they flutter against her skin. She’s trying desperately to relax, her conversation with Mrs. Weasley — _Molly_ , she corrects herself — had been comforting, in a sick way, but at least it meant there was someone on her side, someone who could actually help her. She breathes in, registers the smell of fresh earth, of primrose, of wood smoke carried a great distance on the wind. 

Above her, Ginny laughs wickedly as she sends a bludger hurtling towards Fred, who swings perilously off his broom to avoid it. Ron, carrying the quaffle, briefly regroups with Fred before charging off in the direction of their makeshift goalposts. She watches Fred, taken aback by the intensity of her feelings for him, by how amazed she is that someone so brilliant, so good could ever want anything to do with her. George hurls a quaffle through the goalposts, which Fred misses spectacularly, and she laughs loudly, letting the joy wash through every centimetre of her. After that, she loses track of what’s going on, her sense of reality lost to the blur of ginger hair and blindingly white skin against the bright blue sky. 

She is halfway between sleep and lucidity when she notices a figure approaching her, face obscured in shadow. She glances around her, observes the sun dropped lower in the sky and realises she must have been dozing longer than she’d planned for. 

“Hermione?” 

“Oh, sorry Mr Weasley! I didn’t see you there.” He waves her off, smiling. 

“I was just wondering if I could borrow you for a minute?” She nods, heaving herself off the ground, following him back into the house. 

“Molly told me about your conversation,” he says, directing her into the living room where Molly is standing, looking slightly unsettled. 

“Oh,” is all she can muster. Mr Weasley sinks into the loveseat and Molly follows. 

“Now, I think you’re very right to be as worried as you are, and I think what you asked Molly shows you’re thinking smarter than we all did the last time… the last time this happened. But you’re talking about using a very powerful bit of magic. I know that you’re a very clever witch — all of my children take great pains to remind me of that — but you’re planning on using a powerful piece of magic to do something very traumatic, which I think could be dangerous.”

Hermione doesn’t say anything, just squirms awkwardly, looking anywhere but at them.

“Hermione, what Arthur is trying to say is that we’d like to bring this forward to people who can make sure this is done with the utmost care,” Molly says, offering a weak smile.

“If it makes you more comfortable, I can be the one to do it myself.” She can hear him take a deep breath. “But Molly and I both agree that we could never live with ourselves if one of our children had to do something like this by themselves, and so neither of us are comfortable with expecting you to do so, either. If you trust us, I’d like to take this to the Order.”

He’s absolutely correct, and she knows it.

“Hermione, dear, we just want you to know that you don’t have to do this alone.” 

She’s not sure if the tears that sting at her eyes come from mourning for her parents, or from the thought that someone could possibly be willing to carry this burden with her. 

✶✶✶

Back at home — _back at_ _her parent’s house_ , she corrects herself — Hermione had struggled to sleep. The nights at her parents’ house in Royston had been too quiet, too amenable to welcoming all her worst fears. It was nothing like the silence back up north in the Highlands, which teemed with the promise of magic — good magic. And besides, on a more practical level, Hermione had grown far too accustomed to sleeping in a room with other people, being left in a situation where all she could hear was her own breathing was nothing less than uncanny. 

So really, it’s not her fault that her lids are heavy and that every word Ginny says drags her further and further into the realm of sleep. She’s not trying to be rude, she is genuinely interested in hearing about Ginny’s recent breakup with Michael and all of the gifts he’d sent her to try and win her back. It’s a very grounding distraction from all the horror that lurks at the back of her mind, and it makes her feel perfectly normal for once, even if that normalcy is translating immediately into drowsiness. 

✶✶✶

The first muggle to die once the battle lines are drawn is not given that distinction in the history books. He’s young, with a shaved head that ages him the better part of a decade, and there is no money in the pockets of his trackies. He cries out his last words with a decidedly Brummie inflection, one that confirms the muggle government will think nothing of his death, make no further inquiries, merely chalk it up to drugs and alcohol, and not think twice that a scream is permanently etched into his otherwise healthy face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello —
> 
> sorry if these last couple chapters have felt a bit filler-y. i didn't want to immediately ratchet up the number of words per chapter so i've had to split these up more and more.
> 
> also fun fact: for the entire duration of the harry potter books, bar the back half of deathly hallows, the muggle government would have been controlled by john major and the tories. am i going to snipe at them a bit from here on out? maybe!


	7. act real cool stay out all night, it's gonna feel all right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [chuuuune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4bf67s5lQ&ab_channel=StephenMcElvain)

Percy is a prick. 

In the first week after he and George had started at Hogwarts, they’d approached Percy at breakfast, each feeling a little homesick and a great deal more disoriented, looking to their older brother for some sort of comfort. Percy had only turned away from his conversation with his friends to sniff angrily at them and tell them off for interrupting him. 

He had not gotten better during his remaining years at Hogwarts. After he’d become a prefect and gotten Head Boy he’d somehow managed to become even more of an unmitigated prick. Fred knows this, has _always_ known this, and yet it does nothing to numb the sting of his brother hurling insult after insult at him and the rest of his family. 

Percy had come home preening like nothing else, peacocking about like he was the Minister of Magic himself, and then, when Bill had asked him about it, he’d announced that he’d been promoted to junior underwanker for Fudge. It all exploded from there. Percy had been hollering about his dad’s failures making it nigh on impossible for him to succeed in the Ministry (no mention of his own failure to notice that his boss had been under the control of You-Know-Who) and blaming him for the family’s poverty. When Fred had yelled in outrage, jumping up from the dining table, Ron had had to hold him back to prevent him from decking Percy. Percy had turned on his heels and bounded up the stairs, leaving the entire room to an uncomfortable silence. 

It’s so classically Percy, to situate himself at the centre of the universe and not budge when someone suggests that, perhaps, the sun, planets, and all their moons don’t revolve around him. How could he so poorly read the room, how could he not see that their mum has been working herself to the bone, that the circles under her eyes are more gaunt than they’d been even with five children under ten in the house? How could he just ignore that their father’s hands have a tremor now, that he tenses at every loud noise but can no longer sit in total silence? He doesn’t want to hate his brother, he truly doesn’t, there’s not a bone in his body that is willing to move in this unnatural direction towards anger towards a member of his own family. But Fred’s no fool, he’s done the math, he can hear what his heart is saying, and he knows that Percy is completely and irrevocably wrong, and a twat to boot.

At the head of the table, Ginny holds their mum’s hand. George angrily retreats to the kitchen, returning after a few minutes with a handkerchief, which he shoves in their mum’s hands, before turning back around and staring out the darkened, rain lashed window. Fred’s shoulders ache where Ron had pinned him back, and he rubs at them, avoiding eye contact with Hermione, who couldn’t possibly have arrived at a worse time. 

Percy appears at the bottom of the stairs, and Ron’s not quick enough to grab Fred again before he goes barrelling off. Bill, however, who is closer to Percy than Fred is, beats him there. 

“Percy, just leave,” Bill says, and Fred can hear the angry waver in his normally calm voice. 

“You hardly need to ask me to do that,” Percy says, sniffing.

“Cunt,” Fred spits from behind Bill. Percy looks at him, an eyebrow raised.

“Good luck with your exams, Fred.” He leaves, and Bill spins around to face Fred. 

“Ignore him,” he says loud enough for the rest of the family to hear, and then much quieter, “You’re not wrong, though.” Fred doesn’t have it in him to laugh, so he returns to the table to push food around his plate, trying to block out the sound of his mum crying. 

Hermione is the first up from the table, collecting everybody’s plates and removing them to the kitchen. He and George follow, taking the serving platters and leftover food. In the kitchen, Hermione moves to wash the plates by hand, but he grabs her wrist, shaking his head. She offers the faintest of smiles as he pulls his wand out, setting the dishes to clean themselves. 

He doesn’t like her seeing him like this, when the anger and the upset cloud his eyes and he can’t keep his cool. He doesn’t mean to be like this, has worked for so long to keep it all under control, to try to deal with the shame when he gets this heated. (Because, as he reminds himself constantly, George is _not_ so quick to anger).

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says quietly. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, barely above a whisper. He nods, watching George scrape leftover mashed potatoes into a container. She touches his upper arm, giving it a squeeze, and he covers her hand with his own. 

Ron enters and Fred tenses. Ron looks at Hermione’s hand on his arm and she pulls it away quickly. He opens his mouth to say something but seems to think better of it, turning instead to George. “Bill’s going to build a bonfire, can you come help me move the wood?” 

“I’m busy Ron, get Fred to do it,” George grumbles, his anger barely contained. Fred moves away from Hermione, feeling the cold air in the space between them keenly. “Yeah it’s fine, I’ll do it. Let’s go.” Ron wont meet his eye, but he doesn’t care. 

They stack the firewood to at least a half a metre tall, Bill working remarkably hard to cheer them up to no avail. Their mum and dad have retreated upstairs, and he thinks it’s probably for the best they don’t hear what Bill’s saying. “Honestly, hope he goes crying to Penelope, maybe getting his dick touched by something that’s not a ministry desk will make him less of a horrible prick.” Ginny, who has just appeared with Hermione, makes a face.

“Horrifying, Bill, thanks for that.” She sets several folding lawn chairs down around the fire, and George emerges behind her with a set of glasses. Crookshanks skitters away from George. The cat never did like him. 

“Yeah, horrifying for _Penelope_ ,” Fred says. “Must be like shagging a haunted cheese grater.” At that, everybody laughs. It’s enough to loosen the clenched muscles in his shoulders, at least for now. 

“Now Ginny,” George says, handing her a bottle with a mock-reverential bow, “you can drink with us tonight. But if mum finds out I’ll hang you by your toes.” 

✶✶✶

It’s nice to have Bill back, Fred thinks to himself, sinking the rest of his cider. Bill is cool, always has been, and he knows it has nothing to do with him being eight years Fred and George’s senior. He’s always been a happy medium between them and Percy: both a Prefect and Head Boy at school, but never full of himself or opposed to bending the rules when they needed bending. And then he went off to Egypt and got even cooler, even more sure of himself – if that had even been possible. Fred still doesn’t know why he came back, why he gave up all the fun for a job at Gringotts, or even how Bill feels about it, though he suspects that his new friendship with Fleur Delacoeur has helped cushion the blow. 

They’re sitting together on the side of the fire furthest away from the house. George and Ron are bickering about something menial on the other side of the bonfire, and Ginny and Hermione are talking very animatedly beside them, Ginny regularly smacking her hands together to underline a point. Bill stands, grabbing another two bottles of cider from the bucket he’d conjured a few hours ago and hands one to Fred. Bill flicks his wands and the tops fly off the bottles and into his hands.

“Alright Freddie, George’s got himself a girlfriend, what’s your story?” Fred hums. He sips his cider, his eyes wandering to Hermione. They’re well clear of the school year now, of the Triwizard Tournament and of Krum, of all the self-imposed obstacles that had been in the way of an _official_ relationship, though, he thinks, they’re not kids anymore and there’s not exactly anything that they’re doing now that they couldn’t do if they started putting labels on things. 

“You asked Ron that?” he asks, not meaning to sound as aggressive as he does.

“No.” From across the bonfire, Hermione meets his gaze, a blush spreading over her cheeks and a small smile pulling at her lips.

“Oh, _Merlin_.” Fred turns to look at Bill and realises Bill has followed his gaze.

“Er —” there’s no point lying to Bill. “Yeah.”

“So that stuff in _Witch Weekly_ …?” Bill runs his hand across his stubble, hiding a grin. 

“Yes and no,” he glances up to make sure Ron and George are still focused on one another. “We weren’t together then. I’d just been harassing Ron and then it all snowballed from there.”

“Oh, Fred,” Bill laughs, “oh, mate, what have you done?”

“Has she ever indicated any interest?” Fred blinks at him. 

“I’d hope so otherwise I’ve wildly misinterpreted what we’ve been doing,” Fred says glumly. Bill suddenly becomes very serious.

“Mate, Ron’s been obsessing over her since I’ve gotten home. Does he even know?” 

Fred’s heart sinks. He supposes he should’ve known this was coming, should’ve paid more attention. It’s his own fault, really, he was the one who’d egged Ron on in the first place. 

“He hasn’t got a clue.” Fred looks across the rollicking bonfire to his youngest brother, and feels a twinge of guilt. And then Hermione’s bright, fierce laugh cuts across everything and he’s distracted from the feeling. Bill pats his knee. 

“Better rip the plaster, little brother.” He stands up, stretching his arms behind his head. “Well,” he announces to the entire group, “I’m not as young or as spry as you lot, so I’m going to bed. George, Fred, make sure you clean this up before mum wakes up.”

The fire dwindles, and Ron retreats to his bedroom, followed shortly after by George, who insists that four drinks deep is the best time to write Angelina. Fred charms another log to tuck into the bottom of the bonfire.

Hermione comes to sit at his feet when he returns to his chair, and Ginny moves hers closer to them. They catch him up on everything Ginny has learned about the Order in her attempts to weasel information out their mum each day.

“Bill thinks we should tell Ron,” he says, rubbing Hermione’s shoulders after she and Ginny finish running through every professor at Hogwarts who might be a fellow traveller. 

“Well I was just telling her that you should wait until we get back to school and he’s around Harry again, so he doesn’t feel too cornered.” 

“But if you’ve told Bill, that now makes him the only one in this house besides your parents who don’t know. Surely that’s more isolating?” Hermione asks, threading her fingers through his. Ginny pulls herself out of her chair.. 

“This doesn’t really need to be a three person conversation. I’m off to bed before mum comes looking for me and has a conniption.” She pads away, leaving Fred and Hermione alone for the first time since she’s gotten here. 

As soon as Ginny’s retreating form dissolves into the dark night, Fred tugs Hermione up into his lap, tucking his finger under her chin and kissing her deeply. 

“I missed you,” he murmurs. She frowns.

“It’s only been a few weeks.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say you didn’t miss me, my ego can handle it.”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying.” 

“Then you did miss me?” She kisses him long and hard, and that’s answer enough for him. 

“You know,” she says, pulling away to catch her breath, “Ginny told me that George and Angelina have made it official.” 

“That was ages ago,” he says, running his hands up Hermione’s sides, just for the contact. She hums, her lips pressed into a thin line. She wants to say something, he can tell by the way her eyes dart around his face, then down his chest, then back up to his eyes. He trusts that whatever it is she’ll be self-assured enough to say it when she wants to, so he lets the silence linger.

“I think Ginny might be right,” she says after a moment, looking self-consciously to the ground. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

✶✶✶

They say nothing more on the topic over the next few days, but Fred enlists Ginny’s help in fabricating excuses for Hermione to disappear for hours at a time. 

It’s fine, more than fine, it’s great. When they’re physically detached from each other, he listens to her talk through everything she’s been reading, all the things she’s planning to do next year around her OWL coursework. Sometimes he walks her through the product development process, and she sucks in little breaths when she’s mesmerised, or stumbles through her words as she tries to explain alternatives to the solutions he and George have found. 

It’s nice like this, outside the confines of school, when she doesn’t have to babysit Harry and Ron, doesn’t have a million and one deadlines tying up her thoughts. It’s not that she’s a completely different person, because she’s not, she’s still Hermione through and through, but there’s something more unrestrained about her. Sometimes when she laughs, she snorts, and instead of covering her face up in embarrassment, she laughs even harder until she’s practically gasping for breath. Fred makes it his personal mission to always make her laugh like that. 

✶✶✶

When he and George aren’t working on products for the shop, they’re out flying, mostly just to liberate themselves from the oppressive seriousness of life in the Burrow. They keep their conversations light. George, who has always been the better correspondent of the two of them, catches him up on the lives of their friends. Angelina is somewhere in Snowdonia (“no run-ins with any Death Eaters,” George jokes, though the tension in his voice betrays him); Lee, his parents, his aunt, uncle, and cousins have all absconded to their shared summer house in Keswick; Katie is stuck in Birkenhead where her older brother and his fiancée have moved back in until they can afford to buy their own home (“I will give up my life savings to get them out!”); and Alicia’s family are staying in Edinburgh for the summer while her dad tries to build up business along the east coast. 

He nods along as George explains, not for the first time, exactly what it is that Alicia’s dad does. Something about helping muggles pay to fix their houses when it rains… or something. Through the second floor window he can see Hermione and Ron talking, laughing, Hermione throwing a pillow at Ron’s head. He swells with pride when the pillow hits Ron with enough force to knock him loose on his feet. 

When he’d told George about his and Bill’s conversation, George had asked him if he ever did worry that he might get jealous of Ron and Hermione’s friendship. He’d been confident when he’d said no, but watching them now washes away whatever shred of doubt may have once existed. He turns away after watching Hermione, who is almost spasming with laughter, nail Ron again with a different pillow. 

✶✶✶

Late one night, when they’re sitting out around the bonfire — this time without Bll (who has absconded to central London with Fleur) — Ron stops dead in his conversation with him. “Hermione,” he calls across the fire, her words only slightly slurred, “how far _did_ you get with Krum?” Hermione slowly sips her butterbeer and Ginny, beside her, gasps.

“What are you talking about, Ronald?” Hermione says stiffly. 

“I mean, it’d take quite a lot for a bloke to invite someone to their house, right? So I just figured…” he trails off.

“Ron, I’m at _your_ house.” George roars with laughter when Ron flushes.

“Yeah, but —”

“— you of all people should know it’s perfectly normal for boys and girls to have friendships with one another that have absolutely no romantic element to it.” The instant she says it, she looks like she could take it all back. 

It’s certainly harsh, but it might be the exact level of firmness to get Ron over his crush on her, though a not insignificant part of him wishes he didn’t have to be around for these sorts of conversations, didn’t have to acknowledge his complicity in his brother’s misery. That is not, of course, to say that he’s the only thing standing in the way between Hermione and Ron being together, her feelings on that topic seem settled enough on that front that he’s sure this conversation would have happened anyways. 

Ron swallows hard, and George jumps in to rescue him, asking how far he’d gotten with Harry to want to invite him over every summer, which makes Ginny howl. Hermione looks at him, but he quickly looks away, overcome with something that feels quite similar to guilt.

  
Fred’s chest hurts. He doesn’t want to treat anyone in his family like this, even if it is just Ron. But it’s not just _his_ feelings that are at stake here, and that Hermione’s friendship with Ron, which had always come first and should continue to come first, should take precedence over whatever overwrought feelings about familial duty he had. 

He needs to be more careful around Ron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everything is a bruce springsteen song in my head now, i'm so sorry


	8. a house you didn't build and can't control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [vampire weekend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFEkI_-KNk&ab_channel=ClaphamJunction) for the soul

Hermione has been at the Burrow just two weeks when Molly very gravely gathers everybody together. She and Ron have spent the morning together, worrying over what the upcoming year will mean for them. It’s not exactly a fascinating conversation, but she clings to it because it reminds her that she and Ron _are_ still friends, no matter what goes on between her and Fred. She crowds in next to him on the couch as they all gather in the front room, shrugging when he looks at her questioningly. 

When Molly announces that Sirius Black is not only _not_ a mass murderer, but he is also Harry Potter’s godfather who Ron and Hermione have been in contact with over the past year, she can feel Fred’s eyes boring a hole in her skull. And then Molly tells them all that they need to start packing because they’re relocating to Sirius’s family home in London, which will soon become the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. 

Her heart stammers. 

_London_. 

It’s so close to her parents the thought of not seeing them nauseates her. At least here in Devon she can pretend they’re on holiday, that she’ll walk through the door one day to see them and it’ll be like nothing’s changed. 

She can feel the awkward confusion in the room, and she and Ron glance at each other. When it’s clear that Molly has nothing left to say to them, Ron makes a beeline for his bedroom, and Hermione follows. 

“Reckon we should tell Harry?” Ron asks, flopping onto his bed. She shuts the door behind her and then props herself up against the table in the corner of his room. 

“I expect Sirius will have told him already?” She picks up a snow globe from Ron’s desk. Two Chudley Cannons players whirl around inside it. “Although I actually haven’t heard from —,” _CRACK_ — the snow globe tumbles from her grasp, directly into George’s open palm —

“— Oh would you stop!” Hermione cries at the twins. 

“No,” George says, and the curtness of his tone stops her in her tracks. “We have a bone to pick with you two,” he says grumpily, placing the snow globe on the desk behind Hermione. 

“How long have you two known about this?” Fred leans against the door, arms crossed. Hermione fights to not notice how nice his arms look in his top. 

“Known what?” Ron asks. 

“Known what?” George mocks.

“We couldn’t tell anyone!” Hermione says quickly. “You must understand that! It was too dangerous and telling anybody the secret could have hurt more people!” The silence that falls upon them is brutal. 

She starts to panic, even if there’s _probably_ no reason to. She knows she’s right, there’s absolutely no reason for her anxiety to be spiking like this, but she can’t help it. She can feel her heart pounding at the back of her head, her chest tightening. Has she somehow angered Fred? Surely he wouldn’t be so unforgiving? They live in the early days of a war, if he can’t understand the need for secrecy…

There’s a pounding at the door and if Fred hadn’t immediately jumped back from it she would’ve assumed it was all in her head. 

“C’mon you lot, mum needs help with dinner,” Ginny’s voice calls through the door. Ron stands immediately, his bed creaking under the shifting weight. Fred is first out the door, and Hermione forgets to breathe. George goes next, then Ron, leaving her to teeter down the stairs. 

When she makes it to the table, Ginny is pestering her mum about getting to spend time in London properly, the twins are talking enthusiastically with Bill, and Mr Weasley and Ron seem to be arguing about something. She slides into the last remaining seat, between Bill and Mr Weasley.

“Ah, Hermione, just who I was hoping to speak to,” Mr Weasley says, turning from Ron to look at her. 

“Oh?”

“Ron was just asking me if Harry had been invited to join us in London, and I thought it would be prudent to tell you that no, Harry cannot join us in London this summer.” Hermione blinks at him, startled, before turning to Ron. His face is red and his jaw is working hard, he’s furious. “Dumbledore has decided that Harry is safest in Surrey away from the wizarding world, and unaware of everything unfolding here.” A wave of shock washes over Hermione.

“Dumbledore said that?” Her voice is pitchier than she intends, a little too distraught. 

“Those of us who are in the Order are taking turns guarding Harry, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but we’re… worried about the Ministry, about who’s on what side, and we agreed that it would be best to keep Harry somewhere where we can be certain he’s safe.” 

He hasn’t answered her question. She glances briefly around, only long enough to see Molly’s disapproving expression.

“Can we not write to Harry at all, then?” Mr Weasley waves his hand in front of him. 

“No! No, you can absolutely write to him! But I think you ought to use your discretion in deciding what to tell him. A lot of the things you will see and hear over the coming months should only be conveyed to people on a need-to-know basis. Unfortunately, at this moment Harry does not need to know.” She chews her bottom lip. 

And then, after a beat, “But how will we keep him safe?” Mr Weasley’s face softens considerably, but it’s not him who speaks next. 

“You get to take a holiday from protecting Harry, for this summer at least,” Bill says, gently tapping her hand with his. “Not that you haven’t done a much better job than almost all of us, but for now you get to take a break for a moment, just be teenagers.”

She opens her mouth to speak but Ron blurts out: “Oh but Harry doesn’t get to be a teenager? He’s just got to suffer those pricks all summer?”

Molly cuts in sharply, “Ronald. Watch your language! You know full well that your situation and Harry’s are _very_ different.” Ron falls silent. 

“Yeah, Ron. Harry can _actually_ win a quidditch match,” Fred jokes, and the tension breaks. 

Fred catches her eye, winking at her, and the air rushes back into her lungs. 

✶✶✶

Grimmauld Place is a hellhole, in every sense of the word. Sirius, somehow, looks worse than ever before, and despite being cleaner and well fed, it’s like the house has sapped the life from him. And based on her early surveys of the house, Hermione’s not entirely convinced that isn’t the case. 

Sirius wraps her and Ron into a hug when she and the Weasleys first get in the door, and at first she’s confused — they’d never been _this_ friendly before — but when she catches a glimpse of the faces Fred and George are making, she stifles a laugh.

Long before Fred and George Weasley had ever terrorised the denizens of Hogwarts, she reminds herself, there had been Sirius Black and James Potter. And age and tragedy had not dulled Sirius’ dramatic sensibilities one bit. 

Molly sets them to work immediately cleaning the house, and while it takes her, Ron, and Ginny hours to complete their tasks, Fred and George (with the help of their newfangled ability to use magic outside of school) complete theirs in mere hours, electing to spend the rest of the day bugging the three youngest members of the household.

It’s still their summer holidays, though, so they break up the monotony of their chores with the fascinations of the house. Sometimes, when Lupin is around, she’ll ask him to fill in the gaps in her research, to tell her the truth about what it was like _last time_ that none of the history books want to admit. Sometimes Sirius will wander in to reminisce about life at Hogwarts, stopping only when he stumbles onto a particularly powerful memory that makes his eyes glaze over and his cheeks hollow. Sometimes, Fred will push her into a broom closet, kissing her senseless and then disappearing back into the house, leaving her flustered and breathless. 

In the evenings, they’ve taken to congregating in Hermione and Ginny’s room, one of the twins lighting a piece of that day’s rubbish on fire to create a makeshift indoor bonfire. They've managed to piece together a significant amount of information about the Order’s activities, thanks largely to Ginny’s remarkable ability to coax information out of the adults. She doesn’t mention it to anyone, not even to Ron, but each new piece of the puzzle they slot together saddles her with even more guilt that Harry won’t hear about this for months. 

“It sounds like Tonks and Lupin are guarding Harry tonight,” Ginny tells them one evening in late July, a faint whine to her voice. It’s easy, sometimes, for Hermione to forget that it’s not just her and Ron who fret over Harry, that Ginny has been every bit as on edge as them. 

“You think there’s something going on between them?” Ron asks.

“Oh that’d be lovely,” Ginny coos. 

“Yeah that’s what we need, more people shacking up in this house,” George says, reclining fully on the floor. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ron asks, and Hermione’s heart skips several beats.

“Nothing you should concern yourself with, Ron.” Fred says. Ron glares at his brother, but seems to decide it’s not worth the fight, and returns his gaze to the ceiling. 

“You reckon Bill’s going to bring Fleur around anytime soon?” Ron asks, sounding just a smudge too keen. Hermione stands, deciding she’s no longer interested in following this conversation to its end.

Crookshanks jumps off her lap, making a beeline for the shelf behind George’s head. 

George flinches. “I really don’t trust your cat, Hermione, not after what he did to Scabbers.” Hermione puts her hands on her hips. 

“I could tell you horror stories about that rat that would ruin your life, George Weasley.” He narrows his eyes at her, but she ignores him, not willing to _actually_ ruin his life by revealing that Peter Pettigrew, the man who was directly responsible for the murder of James and Lily Potter, had been his family pet for nearly twelve years. “I’m going down to the kitchen to get a drink. Anybody want anything?” She scans the room and when nobody responds she leaves. 

The house is eerily still in the evenings, and she feels like she sees figures in all the shadows. In fact, she assumes she probably is seeing figures in the shadows, some Black family phantom arrived to call her a filthy mudblood for the fiftieth time that day. Although she insists to everybody who asks that it doesn’t matter, that she’s not upset by the house’s constant barrage of abuse, when she’s alone she still breaks out into a run to minimise her exposure to the dank corridors. The kitchen, thankfully, remains well lit at all times, and she often hunkers down in it to prolong the time between trips she has to make through the dark house.

She pulls a cup from the shelf above the hob, filling it with water, and then boosts herself up onto the countertop. She understands Dumbledore’s logic in keeping Harry in Little Whinging — the protective charms that had been cast over the Dursleys’ house when Harry had arrived still had two years left remaining, and those charms were far more powerful than any man power the Order could supply. It’s the sort of magical protection that she wishes she could have for her parents. She shakes her head, trying to physically force that thought out of her head.

The kitchen door snaps open and she jumps. It’s just Fred, not apparating for once. 

“You alright?” he asks, making his way to her. She hums, turning the question over in her mind. “I don’t want to think about it,” she says, wrapping her arms around his neck when he’s within arm’s length of her. 

“I can help with that,” he tells her, and she believes him. 

When she was a child, she’d always assumed that kissing a boy would be like a mind wipe. Her brain would finally quieten down, her heart rate would slow, and all her problems would disappear, if only for a moment. Now she’s older, she knows it’s nothing like that. Her heart races, her brain squeals with excitement and joy, and her problems do not go away, though when Fred squeezes her hips it feels like her problems are suddenly far more manageable. There’s something about Fred in particular that feels so unreal, like this is all a dream that she’ll have to wake up from eventually. 

There are things she needs to ask him, things that are very real. What it is that they’re doing, whether this thing they’ve got between them is just fun or — 

— The anxiety bubbles inside her whenever she thinks about it, so she always forces it back, tries to live in the moment and just focus on not messing anything up. 

She grabs his face, his rough stubble tickling her hands. His lips are always so much softer than she expects them to be, even after all these months of stolen kisses. He sweeps his fingers through her hair and she wraps her legs around his waist, pulling her closer. She breathes heavily against his face, tugging lightly on his hair. 

Sometimes when she kisses him, she notices a low rumble in the back of his throat. She’s not even sure he knows he’s doing it, but it sends her to another place entirely. She trails her fingers around the back of his neck, tilting his head down to change their angle. Her other hand grabs the front of his shirt. 

Someone coughs. They break apart. 

Sirius. 

“Oh!” Hermione squeaks. 

“Alright, mate?” Fred asks, oh-so-casually, leaning against the counter next to Hermione. Sirius looks between them, crinkles forming around his eyes. 

“Look, you don’t _have_ to take my advice, but if you’re not trying to advertise what you’re doing, either pick some less public rooms or learn some locking charms.” He grabs a dark bottle of liquor from the shelf opposite Hermione. “And don’t tell your mum I said that,” he says, pointing the bottle at Fred. 

When he leaves, Fred grabs her again to kiss her hard, before letting go and disapparating with a loud crack. 

✶✶✶

The next muggle to die also doesn’t make it into the history books. An older woman, red hair giving way to white, who makes the mistake of looking at Walden Macnair on his way into the Ministry of Magic. She ends up in the Thames, a bag over her face that tightens further each time she tries to pull it away.

They grow bolder with each passing day. 

✶✶✶

Nymphadora Tonks is a whirlwind. She’s clumsy, she’s brash, she sticks out in every room she’s in, and Hermione thinks she’s the best thing she’s ever seen. She’s everything Hermione secretly wishes she were, and she practically glows when Tonks corners her and Ginny one morning and demands to know everything about them. 

Tonks is like the sister Ginny has always longed for, and the connection is instantaneous. She unloads in an hour what feels to Hermione like years’ worth of angst about Harry, about always living in her brothers’ shadows, about always being left on the periphery. It’s things that Hermione has always suspected about Ginny, has pieced together over their years of knowing each other, but has never heard from Ginny’s mouth so plainly. 

When Tonks turns on her, Hermione doesn’t want to shy away from the attention, doesn’t feel like it’s undeserved. She tells her carefully, quietly, about last year, about all the unwanted attention, about getting stuck between Viktor, Fred, and Ron, about how scared she is for her parents. 

Tonks doesn’t say much, simply listens and nods when appropriate, cutting in with harsh jokes when she hears about people who have treated Hermione poorly. It’s a remarkable sensation to have someone listen to her who is so far removed from it all but who still seems to be genuinely interested in her. It makes her feel like there might be more to her than just school and books and occasionally flouting tragedy. 

“It sounds like you have a good thing going,” Tonks says when Hermione finishes explaining her and Fred’s non-relationship relationship. “Don’t let anyone ruin it.” 

✶✶✶

They are incredibly careful around one another over the next couple of weeks, keeping several metres of distance between one another when they’re around other people, Hermione always making certain that she’s got at least one person to create a buffer zone between her and Fred whenever Ron’s around. 

Still, they’re only human, and teenagers at that, so even though it’s shocking, it’s not totally surprising when Lupin walks in on them in the upstairs drawing room before an Order meeting one evening. They jump apart, Hermione smashing an antique lamp which Fred quickly repairs. Lupin laughs, although she’s not sure whether it’s at her or at the situation. 

“No need to look so scared, Hermione, I was young once too,” he says calmly. “I came up here to give you some old books of mine.” He sets them on the table and retreats. 

“We need to be more careful,” she breathes. 

✶✶✶

Ginny has evacuated their shared room for a few hours, offering to go sit with George in his and Fred’s bedroom. Importantly, this means Hermione and Fred have at least a few guaranteed hours of privacy. 

So they make use of it. 

She’d never really imagined herself like this, behaving so classically like a teenager, rutting up against her… her boyfriend? her friend? in darkened rooms while his family sit just metres away from them. And yet there’s something about Fred that convinces her that she can do this, that this is exactly what she needs. 

They’ve got at least an hour, she knows this, he knows this, and yet he kisses her like it’s the last few seconds left in the world. He pins her to her bed, kissing her everywhere he can reach, her mouth, her jaw, her neck, her ears, and once her nervousness works its way out through giggles, she’s reduced to a panting mess, clinging to his shirt and his hair like they’re her last connections to reality. 

She’d always associated him with chaos, but now she realised how wrong she was. He’s so very methodical, grabbing her hips and pressing them into the mattress in a way that makes her reach up for him further, desperate for more contact. He pushes her hoodie off her shoulder, exposing the skin not covered by her vest top, where he sucks a bruise. She whimpers, pulling his head closer to her.

A knock on the door. 

“‘Mione?” Ron calls from outside her door and she gasps when Fred nips at her earlobe. “Can I come in? I’ve got some questions.” 

“‘I’ll go,” Fred whispers in her ear, and she shakes her head furiously. 

“No, he’ll hear you. Get under the bed.” Fred stares at her, and she pushes him off the bed. 

“One second, Ronald,” she calls, fighting to make her voice sound normal. “Get. Under.” she whispers at Fred, pointing beneath the bed. Thankfully, he crawls under it, and she slams on her table lamp, grabbing a scroll of parchment and quill for plausible deniability. “Come in,” she calls. 

Ron enters and sits down on Ginny’s bed. Her stomach knots with guilt and anxiety. 

“Who’re you writing to?” he asks, nodding to her parchment.

“Viktor,” she says quickly, too quickly. 

“Right,” Ron says, falling silent. 

“What did you want to ask me?” 

“Oh, er, Ginny and I were thinking of going into Diagon Alley tomorrow to buy some things to send to Harry, y’know, things he might be missing.”

“Oh no, you can’t, you know you can’t,” she cries, “you know we’ve been told not to!” Ron fidgets awkwardly. 

“Well we don’t have to send it, so much, we can keep it until we see him. Just thought it might be nice to… to go out, y’know.” Realisation settles around Hermione like a heavy cloak. 

“Oh,” she says. “Oh. Then yes, that’s fine then, I’ll come.”

“Right,” Ron breathes. He sits awkwardly for a moment, staring at his feet, and Hermione prays he can’t see where the bed skirting is ruffled from where Fred dived beneath it. “I’ll, uh, go then. So you can keep writing Viktor.” The name sounds so _wrong_ coming from him. 

He moves to leave and she stands to close it behind him, collapsing back against it when he’s gone. 

Fred pulls himself out from under the bed, and she laughs. 

“We really need to be more careful,” Fred says, brushing dust from his hair. 

✶✶✶

In the weeks they’ve been at Grimmauld Place, they’ve actually made an impressive dent on the general cleanliness and habitability of the house. She almost doesn’t feel bad that Sirius is trapped in it all the time. Almost.

It mostly feels like detail work now, scrubbing the curtains and carpets, removing some of the ghastlier Black family decorations. It’s the sort of work she can lose herself in, distract herself from thoughts of her parents’ safety or Harry’s. 

Fred’s worth more than his weight in gold in that regard. He and George are in better form than she’s seen them in months, which is saying a lot because they never falter. Even when they’re ribbing her, she doesn’t revert to her usual sense of total indignation, sometimes (okay, maybe only once) she laughs. 

At lunch one afternoon, one of the twins (she’s not sure who, she can’t see through the table to see which one has their wand out) charms Ron’s plate to continuously move several inches out of his grasp, until it’s skating wildly across the table, Ron in tow. At first, Hermione can only roll her eyes — it’s a prank far below their usual standard, she’s not impressed. But when Ron nearly manages to stab his fork into his pasta only for the plate to skid away, forcing Ron’s fork straight into the hardwood tabletop with a cartoonish crunch, even she has to laugh. 

"See, George? A laugh out of Granger, we must be doing something right," Fred says, elbowing George. Beside them, Lupin and Sirius, who have been watching the unfolding mayhem with detached bemusement, turn to look at each other. Sirius' face falls and he takes to staring at his now-empty plate. Lupin watches him, his face unreadable. 

Molly, by contrast, who watches Ron chase after his plate with a clear expression of agitation, eventually announces that they’ve had long enough for lunch and need to hurry back to cleaning. Hermione and Ginny are first out into the corridor, just in time to greet Bill as he enters the door. Behind them, Ron and Fred tumble into the wall, each struggling to force the other into a headlock. When Fleur Delacoeur emerges from behind Bill, looking every bit as sophisticated and put together as ever. She looks too brilliant to be standing here between the dirty, dusty, and downright evil furnishings of the Black family house. 

Ron immediately finds his strength, throwing Fred off and twisting himself around to brush his hands down his jumper, then smooth down his hair. Ginny rolls her eyes and thuds up the stairs. Hermione follows, if with slightly less vigour. 

“Tonks says Fleur is part Veela, actually,” Ginny says when George wonders aloud why Ron makes himself so available whenever she’s in the house. She and Ginny are working together on scrubbing a particularly gruesome-looking stain from the carpet under the Black family tree while Fred and George keep them company. Ron has been conspicuously absent for several hours now, after having suddenly taken a great interest in helping his mother with chores in the kitchen. 

“Tonks?” Fred asks, sounding baffled. 

“Hermione and I have had some brilliant conversations with her,” Ginny says cooly. Hermione watches Fred look to George, eyebrows raised. _Boys._

“What sort of conversations?” George asks, not even bothering to sound casual about it.

“Mostly about how to help Ginny survive with so many nosy brothers,” Hermione snaps, wiping her hands on her jeans. Fred laughs. 

Hermione, however, doesn’t acknowledge him, instead looking beyond him at the door to the room. Molly has just entered the room, looking as though she’d just been personally berated by the portrait of Sirius’ mother. Ron stands behind her, looking equally upset.

“We’ve just received word from Kingsley at the Ministry. There was a dementor attack in Little Whinging—,” someone gasps. She’s not sure if it’s herself or Ginny. “— Harry is fine, but there will be a Ministry hearing about his future at Hogwarts. There’s nothing you need to worry about, but we are going to be having an emergency Order meeting, so if you could please just stay up here until that’s finished and then we can have some dinner.” She looks around at all of them, obviously working very hard to keep a smile on her face, before she accepts that it’s a lost cause and scurries down the stairs. Ron steps into the room.

“What do you know?” Hermione cries. She feels like she’s about to faint, the blood pumping so heavily in her head she fears she’s losing her vision. 

“Nothing mum hasn’t said. I was there when Kingsley’s patronus came in but that’s all I got.” She and Ron look at each other, and then Hermione runs to him, flinging her arms around him. 

“How could the Order have let this happen? Weren’t they meant to have a twenty-four hour guard on him?” Ginny asks when Hermione steps back from Ron. Fred and George stand up from the couches they’re reclined on. 

“If the Order are having a meeting now—,”

“—it might be time for us to debut our new product.”

“Meet us at the top of the stairs outside Ron’s room in half an hour.” With that, they disapparate. 

Thirty minutes later, they stand at the top of the stairs, listening for the telltale click of the door that indicates the meeting has started. They crowd around the bannister and George drops something down the stairwell. 

“What is that?” Ginny whispers. 

“Extendable Ears, dear sister. Hear anything from up to twelve feet behind closed doors.” 

“Amazing,” Hermione whispers, and Fred visibly puffs his chest out. She laughs. 

The Order meeting is not particularly fascinating. Or, at least, it’s not anything she wouldn’t expect from this sort of meeting. Dumbledore is there, and he assents to the Order sending a small party to break Harry out of the Dursleys’ house and bring him here. Tonks and Mad Eye immediately volunteer, and after a brief verbal scuffle, Lupin manages to convince Sirius he can’t go. More volunteers, voices Hermione doesn’t yet recognise, and then the meeting is adjourned. 

“Go, go, get inside a room,” George whispers, retracting the Ear as quickly as he can. 

Ron’s room is the closest, so they all pile into it. And sure enough, mere moments after they all throw themselves into the most casual-looking positions they can muster, Molly knocks on the door. 

“Come in,” Ron calls, and so she does. 

“Oh! You’re all in here,” she says, looking taken aback. “Ron, dear, Harry will be here soon, can you please have a quick tidy? And,” she widens out, directing this to everybody else, “once he’s here we’ll have some dinner.” She looks between Fred and George, “And why don’t you two go make something of yourselves in the meantime!” 

✶✶✶

Fred is in a worse mood than she’s seen him in a long time, possibly ever. It’s not angriness, not like when Percy had finally snapped, but a general sadness so intense it almost takes Hermione’s breath away. He’s spread out on his bed, making it look very small indeed. She crawls onto the bed beside him, pressing a kiss to his check and brushing his ludicrously long hair from his face.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers, curling into his side. Fred is silent for a moment, though she can hear him take several breaths in preparation, before exhaling them in defeat. 

“Do you know why our names are what they are? Me and George?” She shakes her head against him. “We’re named for mum’s two older brothers, Fabian and Gideon, they died in the last war. Took five Death Eaters to take them down, apparently. They kept fighting till the bitter end, and were braver than the entire Order combined. They died just days before You-Know-Who disappeared for the first time. Charlie told us it took mum months to stop crying.” Hermione doesn’t say anything, just traces her fingers along his chest, feeling the soft material of his shirt. “I know George and I aren’t the ideal sons — we’ve never tried to be good at school, or good at anything except what we want to be good at. But since Cedric — since everything in June it’s like mum _hates_ us now. Like she wishes we weren’t there at all, like we’re not worthy of our names. The way she looks at us sometimes you’d think she thought we were about to skip town at the first sign of danger, like Mundungus or whoever.”

“But you won't,” she says matter-of-factly. 

“No, obviously not, but from the way she treats us you’d think we were as bad as Percy!” 

“She’s under a lot of stress, I think, between wanting normal, decent lives for all of her children and planning for a war. I do think she’s being unfair to you, but I don’t think she intends to.” Fred goes silent, and Hermione frets for a moment.

She realises very quickly that if her words can’t comfort him there are other options available to her. 

She swings her leg over his body, crawling upwards so that he’s trapped between her and the bed. She takes his hands and pins them against the headboard above his head. Fred’s eyes go wide and she can hear him forcing air into his lungs. She laughs, and kisses him hard, trying to convey with a kiss what she cannot make him understand in words. 

He strains his wrists against her hand and she relents. He shifts, pulling them into a seated position, and she adjusts, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling herself closer. She doesn’t know what compels her to do it, but she finds herself clawing at his shirt. They break apart briefly, to lift it up and over his head, dropping it on the floor. She runs her hands over his chest. It’s not her first time seeing him shirtless, not by far, but every time is a marvel. The first time, she had been shocked by how leanly muscular he was, his biceps and abdomen more chiselled than she’d imagined in her wildest dreams. 

She clutches his face between her hands, moving to her knees to raise her face above his, kissing him like her life depends on it. 

And the door bangs open. Again. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Just because I know—,” Hermione pulls back.

Harry’s here. 

She jumps out of Fred’s lap, barrelling towards Harry. 

“Harry!” She pulls him tight, grateful almost to the point of tears to have him within arm’s reach again. “Are you all right? We overheard them talking about the Dementor attack. You must tell us everything. And this hearing at the Ministry — It's just outrageous — I've looked it up, they simply can't expel you. It's completely unfair.” When she stops speaking, she sees that Harry is red-faced. She turns around in time to see Fred picking his shirt off the floor and pulling it on. “Oh,” she says again, much quieter. 

“Sorry, I thought this was Ron’s room. I’ll leave,” Harry says meekly. 

“No point, mate,” Fred says, nodding towards the stairwell outside the door, where incoming footsteps echo off the walls. “Gang’s all here.”

Ron pushes into the room and greets Harry excitedly. Hermione watches him closely, desperate to make sure he hasn’t thought to wonder why Hermione is in Fred’s room before him. It seems distraction enough when Ginny pushes through with naught but a quick side-hug for Harry before sitting down on George’s bed — a remarkably impersonal greeting for someone she’d just dumped her boyfriend for. 

Molly comes running up a few moments later to bring them down to eat, and, after a not-inconsequential blow out fight at dinner about how much information Harry is allowed to have about the goings-on of the Order, the Weasley kids, Harry, and Hermione bunker down in Fred and George’s bedroom to comb through everything they know and fill Harry in on what he’s missed. They’re all competing — stumbling over one another, more like — to get what they want to say out, to make sure not a single shred of information remains unconsidered. If she were Harry, she’d be completely overwhelmed, but he takes to it like a fish in water, looking like this information overload is all he could’ve ever asked for. 

They stay up late into the night talking, and Harry, who seemed initially quite tense, settles down a bit more. She’s happy that he’s here, really so happy, but she’s finding that the anxiety over his hearing is far more potent than the anxiety she had felt about him being away from them. 

After Harry excuses himself, she and Ginny withdraw, too, leaving Fred, Ron, and George — who looks like he’s giving serious consideration to jumping out the window rather than stay with the two of them.

“What was that all about?” Hermione asks Ginny when they make it back to their shared room.

“What was what?” Ginny picks Crookshanks up from his spot on Hermione’s bed and cradles him in her arms.

“With Harry! You were awfully chilly.”

“Oh, that,” she sighs, dropping onto the bed. “Well he’s not interested in me, is he? I was speaking to Tonks about it after the Order meeting and she sort of convinced me that it’s not worth my time and effort. So I’ve stopped spinning my wheels.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she sighs. “It’s just been _so_ long. If he hasn’t come round to the idea now, then he’s not going to.” Hermione thinks she’s wrong, thinks Harry is perpetually on the brink of a revelation, but she can’t argue that there aren’t better places for Ginny to allocate her emotional energy. 

“But what about Michael?” 

“Well Michael was a bit… I dunno… not exciting. Not to say he’s boring!” She says quickly when she sees Hermione’s facial expression, “But he just felt a bit like a starter boyfriend, you know what I mean?” Hermione does not know what she means. “Oh bugger it all,” Ginny says, punching her pillow into shape. “He never makes it easy to be in his orbit, does he?” Hermione doesn’t disagree. 

✶✶✶

There’s another Order meeting the night before Harry’s hearing and they all huddle around an Extendable Ear at the top of the stairwell. When it sounds as though they’re starting to finish up the meeting, Hermione moves away. And then Mr Weasley’s voice cuts through —

“What about Hermione?” 

Hermione’s heart drops through the floor.

“The things that happen to these kids will only make them stronger,” Moody says in a parallel conversation.

“No. Absolutely not. They’re children! They don’t need to be stronger, they need to be safe,” Molly snaps and the background conversations in the room snuff out.

“Shall we get her?” Lupin asks. Hermione’s anxiety spikes, and she looks up to Fred, who opens his mouth to ask a question. 

“I’ll go grab her now, give me a moment,” Molly says, more calmly this time.

There’s the sound of movement, and George quickly casts a Summoning Charm, the other end of the Extendable Ear flying into his hands as they all scatter into their respective bedrooms. 

Molly arrives outside her and Ginny’s door seconds after Ginny flings herself onto the bed, burying her face in a quidditch magazine convincingly enough that Molly doesn’t look twice at her. Hermione follows Molly down the stairs, her feet like lead. 

Her heart drops when she enters the dining room. There are nearly thirty people crammed into the room, most of whom she knows, and of those she doesn’t know she recognises many from the papers. Her back straightens a little when she makes eye contact with Professor McGonagall. 

“Have a seat there, dear,” Molly says, guiding her towards an open seat between Tonks and a woman she neither knows nor recognises. 

Lupin takes the lead, the first person in this room to speak to her like she’s an adult. Charlie Weasley has offered to start evacuating people from Britain to Romania, Her heart sinks, another Weasley she is endangering. They’ll modify her parents’ memories the week before she returns to Hogwarts. Bill, under the guise of visiting Charlie, will accompany them to Romania, where Charlie will hide them. There, they’ll be held “until.”

Until, until, until. This nebulous someday that nobody seems to want to name, to even look at directly. For all the specificity they’ve insisted on so far, there’s an unnerving sense of pliability when it comes to talking about when she’ll get her parents back.

For all the flaws in her original plan, at least there had been some clarity, at least she had some control. She wouldn’t have been dragged along forever wondering when it would be the right time to retrieve her parents, she could just know that the answer was never. 

At some point, she’s excused, maybe because they’re done with her, maybe because Molly has realised she’s regressed to head movements instead of words, Hermione isn’t sure. She stumbles up the stairs, dazed. Everybody is still crowded around the top of the stairwell and she can feel their eyes on her like knives. Someone calls her name, but she ignores it.

“Harry,” someone says firmly, and after a second she thinks it may have been her. “We need to prepare you for your hearing.”

Nobody pushes her further and Ginny, ever her steadfast one-woman support team, ushers everybody into Harry and Ron’s room, sounding very much like her mother. Hermione takes the lead in helping to prep Harry, putting all her nervous energy into drilling his story, reminding him of his rights. 

When at last Harry announces that he’s tired, Hermione is the first to leave, tumbling into her and Ginny’s room. When she hears the door click shut behind her, she sinks to the floor, a wailing sob ripped from her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no thoughts today, head empty. hope you're all staying safe xxxxxx


	9. and the strong scent of evergreen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX5mFbZJrac&ab_channel=BarsukRecords)

Fred is one of the first ones down to breakfast that morning, and already his mum is fussing, putting together a plate for Ginny — who is already up and cleaning the study — to take upstairs to Hermione.

“It’s fine, mum, I’ll take it,” Fred says sleepily, before realising his mistake. He freezes, midway through lifting the plate, and then his brain kicks into overdrive. “I’m on the way up anyways — save Ginny the legwork.” She narrows her eyes at him, but he leaves the room before she can say anything. 

There’s no response when he knocks on the door, so he waits a second and then pushes in. Hermione is sound asleep, her face buried in a pillow. Her bed lies perpendicular to the door, so he can see her curled into herself, making herself as small as possible. Even asleep, she still looks so _alive_. It’s not at all like when she’d been petrified, frozen in action. She’s clearly asleep now, but there’s something about the way she looks that’s so… present. It makes his heart cry.

He sets the plate of breakfast food on the bedside table, and then gently, as gently as he can possibly manage, lowers himself onto her bed. He brushes her hair from her face, trailing his fingers across her hairline, watches her shoulders rise and fall with each breath. 

After everything he’d heard last night, the overwhelming desire he’d felt in June to bundle her up and take her away from everything is renewed at tenfold pressure. His chest psychically aches at how much he wishes he could fix things for her, or, if he can’t do that, just take her mind off of it all. 

Back when they’d first started hooking up, George had asked him why. It wasn’t meant to be a cruel thing, as if he couldn’t understand why someone would find Hermione attractive, but rather a _are you sure this is worth the emotional burden_? He hadn’t needed to think about it, there was never any other possible answer. 

A floorboard in the hallway creaks, and he reluctantly tears his eyes away from her. 

Ginny stands on the landing, her arms folded. She whispers, “Close the door, fuckwit, Ron’s just woken up,” before disappearing down the stairs. 

He flicks his wand to close the door before lightly moving Hermione over just enough to let him curl around her. 

✶✶✶

When he wakes up again, Hermione is sitting up, her legs tucked up underneath her to act as a table for her plate. She’s got a book in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. He rubs his eyes, pressing a kiss to the side of her stomach.

“Morning,” he says, stretching out the word as he rubs his eyes. 

“Morning!” The cheer in her voice is put on just enough that it’s unconvincing. He stretches, willing energy into every inch of his body before pulling himself up to a seated position. He watches her set down her bit of toast and put the plate safely back on the bedside table. When she moves her hand away from the plate, he pounces, nuzzling his face into her big bushy hair until he elicits an actual laugh from her, at which point he grabs her face and kisses her. 

And then he pulls back very suddenly, putting his most serious face on. “Look, I’ll only ask once,” her jaw clenches, “I promise, just once. And you can change your answer at any time, but answer me this once. Do you want to talk about it or be distracted from it?” She looks behind him, her eyes glazing ever so slightly. 

“Distract me,” she whispers, her voice so much weaker than before. But her answer is all he needs. 

“Alrighty, then.” He bounces off the bed, standing in the middle of the room. “Accio Hermione’s jeans!” He’s half expecting it not to work, and by the volume of her giggle she’s right there with him. And then — smack — he’s covered in jeans, to an even louder crack of laughter from Hermione. He pulls the jeans from his face, tossing them at her.

“Right, be quick about it, Granger, we haven’t got all day!” He turns to the window to give her some privacy. 

Outside, muggle London is coming alive, even in this sleepy corner of Islington. He wonders what it must be like, to be those people down there, blissfully unaware of what terrors are bearing down on an entire part of Britain they’ve never even heard of. 

“Alright” Hermione calls, interrupting his thoughts. He turns around, crossing the floor that lies between them in a few long strides. He crouches, grabs her by the thighs, and hauls her over his shoulder. She shrieks.

“Quiet! Let’s not go waking the Black monster!” he stage-whispers. 

She is dutifully quiet in the hallway as he carries her up the stairs, and only makes her first noise when he throws her unceremoniously down on the bed. “What do you think you’re doing?” She attempts to scold between peals of laughter. 

“Well we’ve done it, haven’t we? Completed the full daydream charm, and I did promise you you’d have first go.”

She grins. “Oh that’s brilliant!” And then her face falls, “but Harry—”

“—will probably not be home in the next half hour, so you’ve got time to kill.” She looks him up and down, as though trying to discern his trustworthiness. Even after all this time, he’s still surprised every time she chooses to trust him. 

She finally relents, and he kneels on the bed in front of her. “I just need a quick payment from you,” he says, leaning his face towards hers, and laughing when she manages to look confused. The hand that’s not holding his wand cups her face, bringing her closer to him. When she settles in to the kiss, he raises his wand to her face, pulls apart, and whispers “ _Hallucinor_.” 

✶✶✶

Harry gets off, of course, though Fred is convinced there was never a cause for concern. Despite the Ministry’s crusade in the papers, Fred reckons they’d lose a lot of legitimacy if they expelled Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, winner of the Triwizard Tournament, and member of one of the Wizarding World’s most famous pureblood families. Still, he happily joins the celebrations, even managing to convince Sirius to sneak them a bottle of rum when they make their way back upstairs later that night. 

The week before school approaches much quicker than he’d expected, and while he starts to preemptively mourn not getting to split every waking moment between hanging out Hermione and product development with George, he forces himself to stay in high spirits, knowing that this week is going to be far worse for Hermione than any week he’d ever had in his life. 

✶✶✶

The night before it’s supposed to happen, Hermione doesn’t show up to dinner. Ginny points it out to him in hushed tones while he shovels food into his mouth, jumping away from the table at his earliest possible chance. 

She’s sitting on the floor reading a book when he barges in. She looks up at him with the same annoyance she reserves for anyone interrupting her reading, which he takes as a good thing. 

“You haven’t eaten,” he tells her, as if it’s something she might not be aware of. She glances up at him, and he searches her face for any signs of emotion, but there are none. She’s holding it totally together despite everything. She is truly not of this world.

“I’m not hungry,” she replies, looking back to her book. He tumbles onto her bed. 

“And you don’t want to talk about it?” He lifts his head from the bed to look at her.

She purses her lips in a way that reminds him uncomfortably of his mother. “I thought you said you wouldn’t ask again.”

“Maybe I want to talk about it,” he looks up again. The joke hasn’t landed. “No, I don’t. It’s fine. But you could always distract _me_ , you know.” 

She seems to consider it for a moment, but it’s a moment too long, and Fred rather feels like showing off. He jumps off the bed, scooping her off the ground. She laughs, tossing her head back as she wraps her legs around his waist, and Fred can’t resist leaning forward to kiss the column of her throat, and then Hermione’s not laughing anymore. She grabs his hair, pulling it just enough that it elicits a groan from him, and any semblance of self control that once existed in him has completely disappeared. 

He walks them up to the wall, pressing Hermione’s back into it, and when she gasps he thinks he almost blacks out. He kisses along her jawline, stopping to nip at her ear, and then once more when her breath hitches, before continuing along her throat. He’s hazily aware that she’s unfastening the buttons on his shirt, running her fingers along his bare chest, but he can’t focus on it, not when his thoughts are running at a million miles an hour. 

He wants what she’s working towards, wants it so bad he feels like he’s about to pass out, but there is a voice — a small voice, admittedly, one that would be _so easy_ to ignore — that tells him now is not the time. That what they are doing now is distraction, but any more would be him taking advantage of her. But Merlin, if that one little voice isn’t fighting off every atom in his body that is telling him to just press forward. 

But he’s also tactful enough to know not to say it, to not want to do anything that might embarrass her (or, as he admits to himself, that his self control only extends so far), so he lets her push his button-up off his shoulders, wheeling her around and depositing her on the bed when it falls to the floor. 

His arms free from holding duty, he cradles her face, kissing her more chastely than before. He shimmies her up the bed, crawling over her, kissing every inch of exposed skin. “Fred, I—” a knock at the door interrupts her. 

“Hermione, dear, it’s me, could I just come in for a second?” Fred kisses her again, slowly. 

There are words that want to jump out of his chest right now, words that he is desperate to say, but he knows that now is not the time, they would present a risk she might not be willing to take. So he kisses her again, then kisses her forehead. “Good luck. Try to sleep,” he whispers, then plucks his shirt off the ground and disapparates. 

✶✶✶

Everyone in the house seems to be operating under the assumption that Hermione will be despondent on her return. He’s not sure why, surely they all know Hermione as well as he does, or at least well enough to know that she’ll need to work herself to distraction, not sit and marinate in her own sorrow. 

When she returns she is, unsurprisingly, not in the mood to mope. Ginny immediately pulls her away, disappearing to Merlin only knows where, and Fred only sees her again at dinner, when she’s not looking particularly more cheerful, but is looking less shell shocked. Fred charms Ron’s spoon to constantly run away from him, and Hermione almost laughs. 

For the remaining four days until they’re due to get the Hogwarts Express, distraction is the name of the game. George, Harry, and Ginny are indispensable in this challenge, Ron slightly less so. Even Bill, Sirius, and Lupin pitch in at times, Lupin offering to take her out to show her some of the lesser-known historical sites in Wizarding London.

It helps that two days before Hermione and Ron are made prefects. 

“His… but... Ron, you’re not..?” Their mum stutters after Fred breaks the news to her. Ron holds up his badge and his mum lets out what could only be described as a shriek. “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That’s everyone in the family!” 

“What are Fred and I, next-door neighbours?” George says indignantly, as she pushes him aside and flings her arms around Ron. Hermione deliberately catches Fred’s eye, but he doesn’t hold her gaze, looking back at the space between Ron and Harry. He’s not _not_ happy for her, he could just do without the screeching, fawning reminder of his and George’s unique (and lesser) position in their family.

“Wait until your father hears! Ron, I’m so proud of you, what wonderful news, you could end up Head Boy just like Bill and Percy, it’s the first step! Oh, what a thing to happen in the middle of all this worry, I’m just thrilled, oh Ronnie —” 

He and George both make loud retching noises behind her back. It’s the only way they can possibly claw back some sort of control over this situation. A smarter person might call it drawing attention to the farcical nature of human relationships and achievements, but Fred calls it not letting Ron’s head get too big.

“Mum… don’t… Mum, get a grip...” Ron mutters, trying to push her away. At long last she lets go of him and says breathlessly, “Well, what will it be? We gave Percy an owl, but you’ve already got one, of course.” Fred feels that all-too-familiar anger and hurt flare in his chest. He knows he shouldn’t, he and George each have more money than Ron’s ever seen, but there’s something symbolically painful about this offering of gifts. 

“W-what do you mean?” asks Ron.

“You’ve got to have a reward for this!” she says fondly, a tone she’s never used with him and George. “How about a nice new set of dress robes?”

“We’ve already bought him some,” says Fred sourly, intensely regretting the amount of money they’d spent on him.

“Or a new cauldron, Charlie’s old one’s rusting through, or a new rat, you always liked Scabbers —”

“Mum,” says Ron hopefully, “can I have a new broom?” Fred feels like the personification of an eye roll when he turns to George. “Not a really good one!” Ron adds quickly. “Just — just a new one for a change…”

Their mum hesitates, then smiles. “Of course you can… Well, I’d better get going if I’ve got a broom to buy too. I’ll see you all later… Little Ronnie, a prefect! And don’t forget to pack your trunks… A prefect... Oh, I’m all of a dither!” She gives Ron yet another kiss on the cheek, sniffs loudly (and remarkably like Percy), and bustles from the room. 

Fred and George exchange looks. “You don’t mind if we don’t kiss you, do you, Ron?” says Fred in a falsely anxious voice.

“We could curtsy, if you like,” says George.

Ron scowls at them. “Oh, shut up."

“Or what?” says Fred, an evil grin spreading across his face. “Going to put us in detention?”

“I’d love to see him try,” sniggers George. 

“He could if you don’t watch out!” says Hermione, at which point Fred, far too haughtily for his own good says:

“Oh but I’d so much rather _you_ punish me.”

Ron looks like he’s going to be sick, and Fred smirks. He turns to George, and they disappear from the room with a loud crack. 

✶✶✶

She pads into their bedroom the night before they go back to school and George leaves the room with a wink.

“I think we should talk about us,” Hermione says when the door shuts behind him, and his heart stops beating. He’s heard those words before, everyone has.

It makes sense, really, she’s got so much on her plate, and now she’s been given this prefect designation and the only thing he can contribute to her life now is trouble. So really, he should just straighten his shoulders out, take it on the chin, and accept that she’s not going to want to be with him anymore. 

“My favourite topic,” he says, hoping it masks his anxiety. She presses her back against the door, looking very much like she’s trying to become one with it. 

“I— I still feel nervous about all of the things I felt nervous about last winter. I want this,” she gestures between them, “a lot more now. And the threat of war has got me thinking that maybe waiting for a situation to be totally risk free is going to leave me a lot more broken-hearted than I deserve.” She still doesn’t look like she’s said everything on her mind, so he raises his eyebrows to prompt her. “But I worry that you haven’t thought this through entirely. What Malfoy said on the train really made clear to me for the first time how seriously the lines are going to be drawn in this war. And when it does come to… that point… I don’t want you to be made unsafe by your public association with me.”

He laughs at her. 

He doesn’t mean to, but he does. It’s loud, directly from his chest, and harder than he’s laughed in a long time. “Hermione. I’d take a curse for you if you were my girlfriend or not. Everyone in my family would. Are you seriously dumping me because you think I’m scared of trouble?” She looks taken aback.

“Breaking up? What? No, I thought — I thought,” she pauses, dragging her teeth across her bottom lip. “Oh I’ve messed this all up, haven’t I?” She doesn’t move from her position against the door, so he raises his hand in front of him, beckoning her to him. She comes, taking his hand. “I don’t know how to say this, I’ve never done this before! I want… I want what George and Angelina have…” she says softly, her face a brilliant pink.

Fred beams. 

“‘Mione, are you trying to ask me if I want to be your boyfriend?” She buries her face in her hands. 

“Oh it all sounds so childish, doesn’t it?” He pulls her face from her hands, leaning down to kiss her.

“Yeah, it does.” 

She tackles him onto the bed and all he can do is laugh. 

✶✶✶

George is the first one to symbolically break bread with Ron, although Fred is the first one to speak to him again, but it’s not until they’re boarding the Hogwarts Express that Fred realises how dangerous this new promotion for Hermione and Ron is going to be. He’s about to slip up and ask Hermione when she’ll come see him on the train when she tells Harry that she and Ron have to go to a prefects’ meeting before patrolling the train. 

He’s happy for her. He is, he truly is, but even he has his limits, and the thought of Hermione and his little brother patrolling the train like muggle cops is absolutely his limit. 

He bids them goodbye, trying as hard as he can to keep any semblance of sarcasm out of his voice, and then he and George set off up the train in search of their friends. 

“She’s made you soft, mate,” George says to him, nudging him. 

“Hardly.”

“You didn’t make fun of her _once_ for being a prefect. Not once, Fred! That’s going soft.”

“There are extenuating circumstances.”

George narrows his eyes at him, “Yeah and I’m sure she’d appreciate being treated with kid gloves.” He’s not wrong. 

They haven’t actually had a conversation about what their relationship should look like, about when they’re going to break the news to Ron. He convinces himself that retreating to the comfort of secrecy in their relationship would be the sensible way forward. It’s already bad enough that she’ll be facing the usual tormenting from the Slytherins, being romantically attached to him — a Weasley — couldn’t possibly help her case. Plus, now that she’s a prefect she’ll have more responsibilities than ever before, and she’ll need to have a sense of authority that would only be diminished by his public presence.

He doesn’t get to see Hermione before the train arrives at Hogwarts, so he makes his way up to the castle with his friends, not letting himself get wrapped up in fretting the details. 

And then they’re introduced to Dolores Umbridge, and it’s like the sun has risen on a new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i havent had anything interesting to say in the notes of late, my coursework has been exhausting. almost done for the term, though!!


	10. would you be the one to carry me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> christmas break!! i'm freeeeee  
> song

Hermione has never been less happy at Hogwarts. 

Harry is snappier than usual, she’s constantly walking on eggshells around Ron, Defence Against the Dark Arts has never been more useless, and after the first night she cried herself to sleep, Lavender and Parvati have started looking at her like she’s gone fully insane. She’s barely getting to see Fred at all, both of them crushed under the weight of their respective course workloads. Worst of all, this is her _only_ world now, she can’t even pretend she can escape back to the muggle world, or reach out to her mum for comfort, because her parents have been hidden away somewhere in Eastern Europe, because there is a war coming, and she is all alone. 

She tries to keep a brave face, tries to buckle down and do all of her reading and assignments in record time, tries to be there emotionally for Harry and Ron, tries to at least talk to Fred, and tries to hide her tears from prying eyes. It’s only the first Saturday of term and she’s already exhausted. 

Harry and Ron have, unsurprisingly, ditched her to go practice before their first quidditch training of the season. She knows she’s not being fair to Ron, her nerves would also be going haywire if she were in his position, but there’s just so much they have to do, and so much looming over Harry, and she’d hoped that given everything going on right now that someone would be around to distract her. 

Alas, no. 

She’s left fidgeting in the common room, trying and failing to keep herself busy with her Astronomy essay. George is the first person to enter the room in a long while, and the red rings around his eyes strike terror deep into her soul. She leaps up from the couch, her ink pot spilling across the floor (Lavender Brown stifles a laugh on her way up to the girls’ dormitories). 

“Are you okay?” She rasps as Fred stumbles in behind him, looking defeated. His hand is bloodied. “What did she do to you?” She cries, moving to take his hand. He flinches, and her heart breaks.

“It’s nothing,” Fred says hoarsely. 

“No it most certainly is not,” she says, examining the fresh cuts on his hand. George attempts to say something about going to find Angelina but gets halfway through the sentence before giving up and walking away. 

Fred jerks his head in the direction of the boys' dormitories, “C’mon.” 

“Look, I can’t let it get to me, can’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she’s won,” Fred says when they’re in his dorm and sure that the coast is clear. 

“But—“

“— No, seriously. You have to trust me on this one.” He looks at her with such breathtaking sobriety that her knees wobble. “Anyways,” he continues, “you don’t need to be burdened with anything else. And besides, our hands will heal, but Umbridge might never recover from the hell we’re going to put her through this year.” Hermione wants to stop him, wants to tell him that she _wants_ to bear this burden for him, needs him to let her in, but he’s already launched into a full-throated explanation of all the plans he and George have for their war on Umbridge, and the moment passes. 

She pushes herself up onto his bed, toeing off her flats and crossing her feet under her as he talks. “And anyways, there are loads of ways to slip things into her food without it being traceable back to us.” She grimaces and he leans his head against one of the posts of his bed, smiling at her. 

“You’re so pretty when you’re about to tell me off,” he says, and it stops her protestations in their tracks. 

The door to the dorm swings open, and Fred slams his wand against the bed, shutting the curtains tight and leaving her wishing she could just work up the courage to tell Ron so they’d no longer have to sneak around like this. 

“Alright?” Kenneth Towler’s voice asks from outside the curtains. It strikes her that she has absolutely no opinion on Kenneth Towler, that she doesn't actually know anything about him other than that he definitely exists. She wonders if that's cruel of her. 

“Yeah mate, and you?”

“Plenty fine, just grabbing some books.”

“Grand,” Fred says, sounding so much more relaxed than she could ever manage. 

“Good luck with training today, heard some Slytherins downstairs at lunch talking about showing up.”

“Oh, blimey, is it that time already?” Silence reigns for a few seconds, punctuated by the sound of rustling papers. 

“Nice shoes mate,” Kenneth says, laughing, and then the door opens and shuts again.

“What—?” She begins, but Fred cuts her off when the bed curtains fly open. 

“Your shoes,” Hermione looks down at her flats besides his bed and feels incredibly silly. “Look I’d lost track of the time,” Fred says quickly, “Angelina’s going to kill me.” She nods and follows him out of the room. 

And then, for the second time today, she is alone. 

✶✶✶

Ginny finds her the next morning and insists on walking her down to breakfast. Michael wants to get back together and Ginny isn’t sure how to deal with it. Truthfully, Hermione isn’t either. Together, they scratch out a letter to Tonks and set off to the Owlery to find Pig and send it, Hermione clutching a letter to Viktor she’d meant to send days ago. 

Padma, Parvati, Lavender and Mandy Brocklehurst cut in front of them on the Owlery steps but are headed off at the top by Fred and George. After they pass, Padma and Mandy stop at the top of the stairs, watching the twins descend. When Fred gets within a few steps of Hermione, he whips his head around to see if they’re still being watched. They are. He turns around, grinning wickedly.

“Looking good, Granger,” he says loudly, winking at her. At the top of the stairs, Mandy and Padma gawk, before Lavender’s arm shoots out of the building, pulling them inside. 

“What the hell was that?” Ginny asks, watching her brothers climb the hill back up to the castle. Hermione shrugs.

✶✶✶

It’s one of the last pleasant days of the year, so she, Harry, and Ron stake out space in the cloisters to study. Harry nervously recounts his latest run-in with Cho, and Ron interjects to give him (awful, terrible) advice. Around them, students chatter with their friends, or run from class to class. The first years, who seem to get smaller every year, bobble about looking equal parts amazed and intimidated by the organised chaos around them. It’s a feeling Hermione still experiences from time to time, even after all these years.

The important thing is that nobody acknowledges them, nobody makes any snide comments or points and whispers at Harry. It’s like he — and by extension, she and Ron — have blended right back into the scenery.

When she closes her eyes, it’s almost like they’re kids again. 

That is, until George and Angelina wander by, looking at each other as though there are no other people in the world.

Ron rolls his eyes and huffs. “You’d think they’d have the dignity to not be so public about it,” he says grumpily. 

“When have your brothers ever _not_ been public about what they do?” Harry retorts. 

Hermione squirms. When indeed. 

✶✶✶

She convinces — no, begs Harry to start training other students in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and once he finally relents, her workload swells. 

It’s the right thing to do, of course, but it is, strictly, undermining someone in a position of authority, and for the first time in her life Hermione understands why Fred and George behave the way they do. It’s addictive, this feeling, empowering in ways she didn’t know she could be empowered. 

“Can you get Michael to speak to some of the friendlier Ravenclaws?” she whispers to Ginny, and then, without thinking, “Oh I suppose I should ask Harry to ask Cho.” When the last word leaves her mouth she winces, preparing to have hurt Ginny’s feelings, but it’s like the comment glances off her entirely. 

“Yeah, can do. I’ll speak to my friend Luna as well, she’d be a really good shout.” Hermione nods, though privately uncertain of whether Luna would be able to keep the secret. 

“Great. Well then that leaves me…” she scans down her list, “the Hufflepuffs and Lavender.”

Ginny smirks. “Want me to do it?”

“No. No, thank you. I really ought to make nice, this has been too many years of silliness.”

Hermione gazes across the common room to where Lavender is sitting, alone for the first time in a very long time, and despite the anxiety balling up in her chest she knows this is probably the best chance she’ll get. They’ve never really gotten along, her and Lavender. It’s not that they’re _not_ friends, and it’s certainly not that they’re _enemies,_ but there’s always been this weird psychosocial barrier between the two of them. It is true that Hermione finds Lavender tedious, but she finds a lot of people tedious without feeling this horrible anxiety before having to interact with them. 

She stands, smooths the front of her uniform skirt out, summons all her courage and approaches the table. 

“Lavender, hi,” she starts, her voice more unsteady than she’d hoped. Lavender looks up, and Hermione sits down opposite her. 

“Hi.” she says tersely. 

“Look, um,” Hermione fiddles with the quill she hadn’t realised she’d carried over with her, “some of us were talking, recently, about Umbridge and Defence against the Dark Arts — or, rather, the lack of it.” Lavender says nothing, so Hermione sucks in a breath and charges forward, “And we were thinking that we needed a teacher, someone who could prepare us for what’s coming—”

“— so you asked Harry Potter, and now you’re running scared because you think nobody will come because they all think he’s a nutter but you don’t want You-Know-Who to show up in the Great Hall and kill us all.” Hermione, caught entirely off guard, gapes at her. 

“Yeah. Something like that,” she says after taking a moment to pull herself together. 

“Fine. When do we meet?”

“Hog’s Head, first Hogsmeade trip of the year, meeting at one o’clock.” 

“Will Ron Weasley be there?” Hermione furrows her brow. 

“Ron? Yeah, of course he will.” Lavender stares at her for a second. It unsettles Hermione.

“I’ll speak to Parvati and Padma as well, if that’s okay?” Hermione nods. Lavender stands, collecting her stuff in one graceful movement, and leaves. 

Hermione, whose anxiety has not yet left her, stares at the seat Lavender had occupied until seconds ago. 

That had gone over much better than she’d expected. 

✶✶✶

Despite her wishes, her birthday arrives, and despite her best attempts, her friends don't forget. Harry gives her a new quill set and Ron gives her a bottle of perfume that seems wildly out of his price range. Ginny and Tonks have gone in together to give her a beautifully bound copy of _Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes_ , and Tonks wrote her a letter (replete with ink splotches from where she’d obviously dribbled ink but hadn’t paid enough attention to scourgify it) inviting her to stay with her in London over summer holidays. When the post arrives, she receives a parcel from Molly filled with baked goods, which she dutifully doles out to everyone around her. 

(No one mentions the elephant in the room, that this is the first year since Hermione has been at Hogwarts that an owl hasn’t arrived with a sky-high stack of muggle books from her parents. For that she is grateful.) 

After dinner, she slips out of the common room, wandering the corridors aimlessly, trying to force back the hurricane of tears that is battering against her emotional levee. She had promised herself, hope against hope, that she wouldn’t cry in public over her parents, so whenever she finds herself near to tears, she hauls herself out into public, forcing the emotions back into herself. 

Fred finds her outside the Herbology greenhouses, a beautiful silver locket in his hands.

”You don’t have to be strong all the time,” he tells her as she opens the locket to reveal a picture of her and her parents. “Bill snatched it for me,” he says when she tumbles into him, tears choking off her words.

✶✶✶

“Where’s the proof You-Know-Who’s back?” Zacharias Smith sneers. 

“Well, Dumbledore believes it —” Hermione begins, trying to keep her temper even.

“You mean, Dumbledore believes him, and you believe Dumbledore ‘cause you’re dating him,” he continues, nodding at Harry.

“ _I most_ _certainly am not!_ ” Hermione starts, momentarily losing focus on her priorities. 

“Who are you?” asks Fred angrily.

“Zacharias Smith,” he answers, “and I think we’ve got the right to know exactly what makes him say You-Know-Who’s back.”

“Look,” says Hermione, “that’s really not what this meeting was supposed to be about —”

“It’s okay, Hermione,” Harry says, shifting irritably beside her. She tries to calm herself, if she shows any indications that she’s getting frustrated by all this, Harry will lose his temper and all her work will be for nought. “What makes me say You-Know-Who’s back?” he asks, looking Zacharias straight in the face. “I saw him. But Dumbledore told the whole school what happened last year, and if you didn’t believe him, you don’t believe me, and I’m not wasting an afternoon trying to convince anyone.”

Nobody speaks, nobody even moves.

“All Dumbledore told us last year was that Cedric Diggory got killed by You-Know-Who and that you brought Diggory’s body back to Hogwarts. He didn’t give us details, he didn’t tell us exactly how Diggory got murdered, I think we’d all like to know —”

“If you’ve come to hear exactly what it looks like when Voldemort murders someone I can’t help you,” Harry says. Hermione glances at Cho, who looks as though she’s a slight change of the wind away from bursting into tears. Hermione swallows, tries not to wonder if Cho feels even remotely similar to her. “I don’t want to talk about Cedric Diggory, all right? So if that’s what you’re here for, you might as well clear out.” 

Susan Bones, who Hermione immediately decides is her favourite Hufflepuff, asks if it’s true that Harry can produce a corporeal patronus, and the mood in the room shifts, suddenly everybody has something to contribute about their experiences of Harry’s talent. Hermione doesn’t smile, but she feels lighter, _almost happy?_ She _needs_ to get out of the habit of expecting the worst of every situation. 

Before she mentally catches up to what’s going on, every single person at the meeting has signed up to their group and filed out of the pub, leaving Harry, Ron, Fred and George to amble out last, still clutching their butterbeers.

“That Zacharias is a right cunt,” Ron says when he’s sure they’re far enough out of earshot.

“I don’t like him much either,” she admits, though not overly-pleased with Ron’s crass assessment, “but he overheard me talking to Ernie and Hannah at the Hufflepuff table and he seemed really interested in coming, so what could I say? The more people the better.”

“Loads of them looked really dour,” George says, “Reckon Michael Corner and his friends wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t been going out with Ginny —”

Ron inhales his butterbeer, spilling it down his front. “He’s what? She’s going out with — my sister’s going — what d’you mean, Michael Corner?”

Hermione rolls her eyes. “That’s why he and his friends came, I think — well, they’re obviously interested in learning defense, but if Ginny hadn’t told Michael what was going on —”

“When did this — when did she — ?”

“They met at the Yule Ball and got together shortly thereafter, and then split over the summer, and got back together a few weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” 

“Probably because she knew you’d react exactly like that,” George says. Ron sputters.

“Reacting like what? I’m fine!”

“Course you are,” George says absently, waving to Lee. Fred catches Hermione’s eye and she swallows hard. “Anyways we’re off,” George says, moving in Lee’s direction. Fred goes too, and Hermione’s stomach churns. 

✶✶✶

A few moments before the moon sets in the sky, several long hours before the sun rises, Hermione watches her friends die. She’s trapped in the hedge maze, stumbling around corners and into the sharp bushes, her clothes almost as ragged as her breathing. Beneath her feet, Ginny Weasley’s lifeless body is pulled under the hedgerow. Ahead, the Triwizard cup cuts an otherworldly cobalt glow into the oppressive darkness of the world. She can feel the blood trickling from her face, tasting the copper as it spills onto her tongue.

She is so close. Just a few more metres separate her from victory, from safety.

When her fingers close around the handle, she is not alone. 

Together, they tumble forward through space and time, a gut-wrenching crack announcing their arrival to – to… to the _graveyard_. 

She drags herself up onto her knees, every joint shrieking in pain. Her mother’s voice whispers her name, and she snaps around, desperate to see her. 

But she is a stupid girl, and she has fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Her mother is gone, she is dead, and now she must watch as Peter Pettigrew draws his wand, raises it into the night and —

And she is blinded by emerald light. 

But she doesn’t fall, she doesn’t die. Her vision comes back to her slowly at first, and then all at once, and she gasps air into her aching lungs. 

Fred is dead. He lies at her knees, the ghost of his last laugh etched into his face. 

Someone grabs her shoulders, shaking her, and everything goes black. 

And then light, subdued light, _heliotrope_ , she tells herself, floods her vision. Someone is saying her name, a dark figure, whose hands are on her. She flinches, jerking backwards until her head bangs against something hard, rock, a wall. The pain-induced adrenaline focusses her. She’s in her bed, at Hogwarts. 

“Are you okay? You were making a lot of noise,” Lavender Brown asks, and Hermione feels her heart begin to stutter back to a normal pace. 

“Yes. Sorry, I —” she pauses, not wanting Lavender to think she's even stranger than she already does, “I don’t remember what I was dreaming about.” 

There’s silence in the dormitory, and Lavender has still not removed her hands from Hermione’s shoulders. She counts her breaths in the dark, and when she has recovered it, Lavender pulls back.

“Okay,” she says, and leaves. 

✶✶✶

“Oh fuck that horrible old crone!” she blurts out after what feels like her hundredth hour pouring over the maps in _Hogwarts: A History_ , desperately seeking a place for them to meet. Fred laughs loudly. 

“Hermione Granger, did you just say ‘fuck’?” 

“Please, I swear all the time,” she says, waving him off, but it’s not enough.

He clutches her face between his hands and kisses her like his life depends on it. Hermione briefly considers adding more vulgarity to her daily speech.

“We need to tell Ron,” she says, pulling back quickly.

“What?” Fred demands, looking harried. 

“We need to tell Ron. I’m sick of hiding in dark corridors and old classrooms. This is so silly, we need to just tell him, we can’t go on like this forever.”

“Forever?” he asks with a shit-eating grin. 

“Or I can just tell him that we dated and it’s over now, and I’m about to fly off to Bulgaria to start a whirlwind romance with the world’s hottest quidditch player.”

“I’ll tell him.” 

Hermione laughs, pulling him back to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i may have to slow down updates a bit, i didnt manage to draft as much as i'd hoped to in my down time so i'm playing catch up a bit now!


	11. my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new taysway!! new taysway!!! truly we are blessed  
> anyways obviously i had to title this chapter for [ one of the songs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nIOx-ezlzA).

She is stunning. Sometimes he makes the mistake of forgetting that. And then, when he’s forced to remember, when he’s given enough distance from her to see all that she is, it knocks the breath out of him. He is so in love with her, he’s never going to be the same again.

“One sickle,” George breathes to him, and he’s never doubted his brother’s judgement more than in this moment. 

“You’re on.”

Ron is knocked backwards five feet, and George slips the coin into his hand.

Fred smirks.

✶✶✶

“Oh for fuck’s sake, I’m sick of that bitch,” Angelina moans, throwing herself down on George’s bed. 

“No luck, then?” Fred asks, chucking a miniature quaffle across the room to Lee.

“None. I’m going to have to take it to McGonagall and see if there’s anything she can do.” There;’s a brief moment of silence, where everybody in the room seems to struggle to find the right words to cheer Angelina up — it’s a losing battle. “It had to be the one year I get to be captain,” Angelina says woefully. “I get one year to prove myself and it gets snatched away from me.”

In that, there was no melodrama. Angelina had struggled to define herself at Hogwarts and at home for years. When it became clear last year that she was the top choice for Gryffindor team captain, it was the happiest Fred had ever seen her. And it wasn’t without merit, either; nobody had been more disciplined or worked harder on the team than Angelina, what she lacked in natural talent she made up for tenfold in dedication, which made her a fierce player and an even fiercer leader. Watching the spoils of her hard work snatched away so callously nauseates Fred — even though, in his heart, he knows that this is _just how the world works._

“I don’t think it has to be that dramatic,” Alicia says from the floor in front of Fred’s bed, where she and Katie are sorting library books into piles organised by class. They’ve always been the more intellectually-inclined members of their social circle, the bright spots that have kept the rest of them from total academic humiliation. Alicia’s academic abilities stem in no small part from her intense optimism and her preternatural ability to push back the bleakness of the situation to find the happier reality. 

“I’m sure we’ll batter Slytherin anyways, Ange.” George says, pushing her hair back from her forehead. She closes her eyes for a second, her expression impenetrable, and then — 

“I’m not going to feel better until I do something about this.” She rolls off the bed, and evacuates the room, her back ramrod straight and her head held high. 

“You going after her?” Katie asks George, and Fred laughs.

“Are you trying to get quidditch banned entirely? Course I’m not going after her.”

✶✶✶

Prefect privileges, he learns, have some benefits. For example, when Marcus Turner, a Ravenclaw prefect in his year, catches them breathless down the Charms corridor after hours, Hermione merely waves her badge at him. 

“You really are a horrible influence on me,” she whispers when Turner leaves. 

“Actually, I seem to remember you insisting that you’re perfectly capable of getting yourself into trouble without my help,” he parrots back at her, winking. And it is true, she is perfectly capable of getting herself into trouble on her own, and he doesn’t think he’s really been all that great of an influence on her, whatever parts of her personality she’s referring to have always been a part of her, even if she hasn’t been paying attention. 

She grabs his uniform tie, pulling him back to her, and he obliges. “We really do need to work on being more careful,” she whispers against his lips. When he kisses her, it’s mostly to get her to stop reminding him of the things he should be doing, but when she drags her teeth along his bottom lip, it turns into something so much more intense.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he groans.

“We should only be so lucky,” a sneering voice says from behind them. “Maybe she can do the world a favour and finish herself off, too.” He pulls back slowly, straightening up to full height and squaring out his shoulders as he faces Malfoy. 

Draco Malfoy is all the things Fred hates about Hogwarts. He’s rich, he’s untalented, he will succeed at Hogwarts and in life without barely lifting a finger. And all that is without getting into his utterly dogshit politics and outright bigotry. In a fair and just world, Fred would transfigure Malfoy into a rat and abandon him in some desert somewhere. Unfortunately in this world, replete with injustice and evil, every arm of power exists to protect Malfoy and his kind.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Malfoy says, thrusting his Prefect’s badge forward, “better think carefully, Weasley.” He can feel his temper rising, his eyesight tunnelling. 

“Fred, it’s not worth it,” Hermione says behind him, her voice measured and cool. He almost doesn’t hear it, or almost doesn’t process it, he’s not sure which. She’s always so rational, so calm, and he truly envies her for it, wishes he could always just take everything on the chin like she does. The blood is pumping in his head too loudly and he’s too focused on forcing his feet into the ground to keep himself from closing the distance between him and Malfoy and pummelling him. 

She tugs on his hand and the anger fades. 

“Please.”

He goes. 

  
  


✶✶✶

To ensure Malfoy’s silence, he and George cast their canary cream spell on his morning toast.

It’s worth it to see Hermione laugh so hard she has to nestle her face in her elbow to hide the mirthful tears that stream down her face. 

✶✶✶

McGonagall intervenes, and Angelina manages to get the quidditch team returned, which is good, he thinks, except that he is filled with dread at the thought of Ron embarrassing himself in front of the entire school. 

Ron, evidently, feels the same. He’s reverted to his usual moodiness, and nearly bites George’s head off when he walks in on him and Angelina before the match. Harry, to his tremendous credit, manages to talk Ron down, dragging him into a corner of the changing rooms where they each talk quietly to each other until it’s time. 

Ron’s face goes comically pale as they march through the tunnel to the pitch, and Fred is fully aware that this is going to be a humiliating match. He’s got faith — if nothing else — that Harry will be able to end it before it gets too brutal, but it doesn’t mean he’s excited for it. 

It is, as so many things are this year, so much worse than he’d ever expected. Ron lets goal after goal in, with no sign of recovery. Fred is clipped by a bludger sent his direction by one of the goons he and George had hexed on the train at the end of last year, and he has to spend the rest of the match playing with a steady flow of blood trickling into his mouth. 

Harry finally gets it in his head to put them out of their misery, diving precariously after the snitch just seconds before Fred is about to fly his own broom directly at the ground to end it all. The same cunt who’d sent the bludger his direction earlier smacks one after Harry well after the whistle’s blown, and he and George drop to the ground beside Alicia, who is whooping with joy at their win. He hugs her, turns to hug Angelina, and realises something is terribly wrong. 

“— we couldn’t fit in useless loser either — for his father, you know —” Malfoy yells at Harry, and Fred turns on his heels to face him.

“Leave it,” says Angelina, taking Fred by the arm. “Leave it, Fred, let him yell, he’s just sore he lost, the jumped-up little —”

“— but you like the Weasleys, don’t you, Potter?” Malfoy sneers. George has turned on him too, now. “Spend holidays there and everything, don’t you? Can’t see how you stand the stink, but I suppose when you’ve been dragged up by Muggles even the Weasleys’ hovel smells okay —” Harry grabs hold of George; and Fred can feel Angelina, Alicia, and Katie struggling to hold him back. Malfoy laughs. “Or perhaps,” Malfoy says, leering as he backs away, “you like being at the Weasley pigsty because you just want to catch a chance at his fat mudblood girlfriend —”

All the hands on him release at once, but Harry gets there first, landing a solid punch into Malfoy’s stomach. Fred follows it up with a shot to the nose that feels more than a little bit satisfying. Someone (maybe Malfoy?) lands a hit on his lip and he can feel it split open, warm blood mixing with the dried blood on his chin. 

_"IMPEDIMENTA_!” He’s forced backwards onto the grass with a sickening crack. That’s his wrist gone. 

When the anger finally clears from his head, he and Harry are standing outside McGonagall’s office as she furiously unlocks it. He doesn’t try to remember how they got here. 

“Well?” she demands when they enter. “I have never seen such a disgraceful exhibition. Two onto one! Explain yourselves!”

“Malfoy provoked us,” Harry bites, and Fred has to admire his optimism. Absolutely nothing is going to save them from what’s coming.

“Provoked you?” she shouts, slamming a fist onto her desk and sending a tin of biscuits flying. “He’d just lost, hadn’t he, of course he wanted to provoke you! But what on earth he can have said that justified what you two —”

“He insulted my parents,” Fred spits. “And Hermione Granger...”

“But instead of leaving it to Madam Hooch to sort out, you two decided to give an exhibition of Muggle duelling, did you?” she continues to yell. “Have you any idea what you’ve — ?”

“Hem, hem.” Fred goes cold. “May I help, Professor McGonagall?” Umbridge asks from the door to the office. 

McGonagall straightens. “Help?” McGonagall repeats in a constricted voice. “What do you mean, ‘help’?” Umbridge strides forward into the office, smiling. If he couldn’t feel the break in his wrist he’d have half a mind to pummel her, too.

“Why, I thought you might be grateful for a little extra authority.”

“You thought wrong,” McGonagall says, turning back to them. “Now, you two had better listen closely. I do not care what provocation Malfoy offered you, I do not care if he insulted every family member you possess, your behaviour was disgusting and I am giving each of you a week’s worth of detention! Do not look at me like that, Potter, you deserve it! And if either of you ever —”

“Hem, hem.” McGonagall closes her eyes as though praying for patience, and Fred feels a twinge of sympathy for her. A disgusting thought, really, sympathy for authority. 

“Yes?” 

“I think they deserve rather more than detentions,” Umbridge says, smiling still more broadly.

“But unfortunately,” McGonagall says, with an attempt at a reciprocal smile that makes her look as though she has lockjaw, “it is what I think that counts, as they are in my House, Dolores.”

“Well, actually, Minerva,” simpers Umbridge, who seems oh-so much like Percy, “I think you’ll find that what I think does count. Now, where is it? Cornelius just sent it...I mean,” she laughs falsely as she rummages through her handbag, “the Minister just sent it… Ah yes… Hem, hem...‘Educational Decree Number Twenty-five...’”

“Not another one!” McGonagall exclaims violently, and Fred’s twinge of sympathy grows.

“Well, yes,” says Umbridge, still smiling. “As a matter of fact, Minerva, it was you who made me see that we needed a further amendment… You remember how you overrode me, when I was unwilling to allow the Gryffindor Quidditch team to re-form? How you took the case to Dumbledore, who insisted that the team be allowed to play? Well, now, I couldn’t have that. I contacted the Minister at once, and he quite agreed with me that the High Inquisitor has to have the power to strip pupils of privileges, or she — that is to say, I — would have less authority than common teachers! And you see now, don’t you, Minerva, how right I was in attempting to stop the Gryffindor team re-forming? Dreadful tempers… Anyway, I was reading out our amendment… hem, hem…” She reads out the proclamation and then rolls up the parchment and puts it back into her handbag, smiling all the while. “So... I really think I will have to ban these two from playing Quidditch ever again,” she says, looking from Harry to Fred and back again.

“Ban us?” Harry says, still not aware that silence is his ally. “From playing… ever again?”

“Yes, Mr. Potter, I think a lifelong ban ought to do the trick,” Umbridge says. Her smile makes him want to vomit. “You and Mr. Weasley here. And I think, to be safe, this young man’s twin ought to be stopped too — these tempers tend to run in families. I will want their broomsticks confiscated, of course; I shall keep them safely in my office, to make sure there is no infringement of my ban. But I am not unreasonable,” she continues, turning back to McGonagall who was staring at her emotionlessly. “The rest of the team can continue playing, I saw no signs of violence from any of them. Well... good afternoon to you.” 

✶✶✶

“Banned,” Angelina says later that evening, as though the word itself is entirely foreign to her. 

“Banned. No Seeker and no Beaters… What on earth are we going to do?” It was as if they hadn’t won the match at all, if the forlorn faces of the team, who had monopolised the seats around the fire, were anything to go on.

“It’s just so unfair,” says Alicia numbly. “I mean, what about Crabbe and that bludger he hit after the whistle had been blown? Has she banned him?”

“No,” says Ginny miserably from her place on the couch next to Harry. “He just got lines, I heard Montague laughing about it at dinner.” 

Fred’s wrist _aches_. He hadn’t gone to the infirmary after getting McGonagall’s office, had been too emotionally volatile to sit still for too long, and then hadn’t wanted to admit to having been worse off after the fight than Malloy. So he lets his hand hang limply by his side, doing his best not to draw attention to it. 

“And banning George even though he didn’t do anything!” Alicia says, slamming a pillow onto the ground. Angelina’s lips press together into a tight line. Fred tries not to think about how awful this must be for her. How he'd just gone and ruined everything Angelina had worked so hard for just because he couldn't learn to turn the other cheek.

“Yeah, well, I only didn’t go after him because I’m a gentleman,” George says, and when several people huff out weak laughs, he continues, “and because I didn’t want to deprive Fred of the catharsis.” 

“What on earth could he possibly have said to you to make you react like that?” Hermione asks from beside Harry, and he looks away from her.

“He insulted Mr and Mrs Weasley,” Harry says hollowly, “and—”

“—and the house,” Fred says quickly, not wanting to reveal what had really set him off. 

“And the house?” Hermione repeats sceptically.

“Well you know how he is,” George says, “even poetry sounds like a threat when he says it.” 

“I’m going to bed,” Angelina says quickly. “Maybe this will all turn out to have been a bad dream… Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and find we haven’t played yet...” George tries to take her hand, but she flexes, dropping it. 

A knot forms in his stomach. As if it’s not bad enough that he’s gone and gotten them all banned from quidditch _for life_ , he’s causing problems in George’s relationship with Angelina, too. This fucking temper of his. 

He accidentally bumps his hand and he flinches, the pain stabbing through him like a hot knife in the back of his neck. 

“Fred?” Hermione asks, her voice worried, and he realises he’s fucked yet another thing up.

“It’s nothing. I’m going to bed,” he says abruptly, leaving before anyone can stop him. 

✶✶✶

He doesn’t go to the infirmary the next day, and continues to put it off until the pain mostly fades into the background noise of his life. There’s so much to be upset about lately (no quidditch, Umbridge generally, NEWTs work) that it doesn’t really stick out as particularly egregious. 

Their classes — at least the ones Fred bothers showing up to — get progressively worse. All the seventh year students have become hollow shells of their former selves, cranky and crotchety and out for blood. He’d say that their attitude seems to have spread to every other year in the school, but this sort of grumpiness is bog standard for seventh years, and it never, ever transcends age groups. The castle-wide angst is a phenomenon unto itself. 

He tells himself that’s why he doesn’t go and see Madam Pomfrey about his wrist, because he doesn’t want to find out if _everybody_ in this castle is that grumpy. So he gets in the habit of favouring his other hand, making sure his sleeve is pulled down far enough to hide the bruising until it finally subsides. If the pain doesn’t go away on its own, he’ll just have to get his mum to fix it over Christmas break. It’s really not a problem. And besides, it’s a good reminder that there are consequences for his temper. 

At their last DA meeting before the Christmas break, George hits him with a particularly pointed knockback jinx, and he breaks the skin on his good hand with his teeth trying to stifle his shout. Hermione stops what she’s doing to watch him, but he forces himself back onto his feet, shoving his now-bleeding hand in his trouser pockets. 

✶✶✶

It is the worst of all possible worst case scenarios. It is the one thing he never wanted to happen.

Ever since Ginny was… possessed in his fourth year, he had sworn to never let anything bad happen to anyone in his family again. He knows, _he knows_ , as McGonagall tells him what happened, there’s nothing he could have done to have prevented this, that there’s no way it could reasonably be his fault or his responsibility, but it still nauseates him. 

“Now, if you’ll please take hold of the portkey,” Dumbledore says calmly. 

Ginny asks what Fred wishes he could: “What about Hermione? She —”

“— will be along tomorrow when term has officially ended. I think you’ll agree that there’s no need to draw any more attention to Miss Granger’s home life.”


	12. the holidays linger like bad perfume

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this house we respect [taylor swift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuvhOD-mP8M)

When Hermione wakes the following morning, she is immediately dragged into Professor McGonagall’s office. 

Thoughts still thick with sleep, she hardly registers what’s happening until McGonagall taps the door with her wand, muttering several locking and silencing incantations. “Miss Granger, late last night Mr Potter and the Weasley children were sent back to London via portkey,” she stands behind her desk, her knuckles grazing the wood tabletop. McGonagall tells her that Arthur Weasley was attacked at the Ministry, that he’s in St Mungo’s, that she’ll be collected at King’s Cross by a member of the Order who will escort her through London, that she is under no circumstances to tell a soul about this. 

She knows things are bad, she’s never had any delusions about the nature of the work the Order is doing. And especially after the World Cup, when the Death Eaters had been so brazen… well it’s no surprise _someone_ got attacked. But someone as close to Harry as Arthur Weasley? And at the ministry no less? Hermione’s knees go weak. 

Before she can even ask a question, she is ushered out. McGonagall instructs her in no uncertain terms to go down to the Great Hall for breakfast and to not breathe a word of this to anyone.

She finds Neville and Dean. Seamus is there, too, but when she approaches her gathers up his stuff and makes his excuses. Hermione doesn’t hear what bullshit he tries to spin, she’s too caught up in her thoughts. 

Her mind spins. Arthur Weasley attacked? At the Ministry? But that was too bold for even the Death Eaters, surely. Unless the infiltrations had been far more effective than she’d realised, unless the entire Ministry had been completely lost to Voldemort…

“Hem hem.” 

She wheels around. Behind her, Dean and Neville go silent.

“A word, please, Miss Granger.” Umbridge stares down at her, ghastly fuchsia handbag in hand. For the briefest of seconds, she hears Fred’s voice in her head, telling her how easy it would be to transfigure the bag into a rat and make a break for it. But there’s a crucial difference between her and friend: she’s in it for the long haul, and has to be strategic in her resistance; Fred, by comparison, is, well —

Hermione follows her, unable to will herself to do anything else. 

Umbridge steers her into an empty classroom before turning on her. “You will sit down, please, Miss Granger.” She does. “Last night, several students disappeared from the castle grounds. You, of course, are perfectly aware of who those students are and to where they disappeared.” Hermione doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink for fear of revealing too much. Umbridge retrieves something from her bag — a quill. The blood in Hermione’s veins runs cold, she knows what that quill is, what it does. “You will kindly help me by recording some information I’m very interested in.” 

“I have to get the train back to King’s Cross,” Hermione says weakly, as if that is in any way a helpful angle to press.

“Then I suppose that means you ought to write quickly,” Umbridge says, handing her the quill. 

✶✶✶

Her hand continues to ache when she boards the train, though she considers herself lucky that it barely broke the skin.

Without Harry and Ron, she quickly dispenses with her prefect duties before throwing herself into an empty compartment. She makes an attempt at a book, but it’s futile, her anxiety level ratcheted too high and her hand too painful for her to focus, the words dancing off the page and into another universe entirely. 

It’s a long train ride, perhaps the longest it’s been since she started at Hogwarts, her thoughts rattle around her brain like inmates in a maximum security prison. She presses her fingers into the rough moquette of the compartment bench, pushing as much energy through the tips of her fingers as she can until the waves of anxiety relent. 

She supposes she’ll be on her own when they get to King’s Cross. It’s only reasonable, and she’s certainly not resentful, she couldn’t possibly expect anybody to remember her when Mr Weasley had just been attacked. Anyways, she’s more than well versed in navigating her way around London, so there really is no cause for concern. The knowledge that she _can_ fend for herself does nothing to assuage the horrible, horrible panic that’s raging like a wildfire in her stomach.

The train pulls through the inky black and sodden night, and Hermione watches the raindrops trail down the window, dreading having to negotiate all her luggage in this mess. 

When the Hogwarts Express’s ancient brakes begin to screech under the weight of stopping the carriages, she tears her eyes from the window, resolving herself to getting herself to Grimmauld Place without crying. 

The world, however, has different plans for her:

“Alright, Hermione!”

She is pulled into a crushing hug that relaxes her so much she doesn’t even flinch when Tonks knocks her trunk off the trolley. 

“How’s Mr Weasley?” she gasps when at last Tonks releases her and they move to exit the platform. 

“He’s fine! Absolutely fine! Well, not _absolutely fine_ , he’s a bit banged up really, but thankfully Harry got the news out early enough.”

Her receding panic resurges with a vengeance. “Harry?!”

Tonks’s eyes widen, “Oops. Better not to talk about this out here.” 

They get the tube to Islington, much to Hermione’s relief — what she’s read of side-along apparition has not made her keen to experience it. Tonks handles it well, looking no more out of place than the punks headed to Camden Town. It raises new questions for Hermione: thus far, she’s only experienced a profoundly segregated life, the world of magic and muggles never, ever mixing. Could there be a future for her where the dividing lines were not so stark? 

When they make it into Grimmauld Place, it’s as if no one is there at all. She looks behind her to Tonks, who nods towards the kitchen. Hermione steps inside and is immediately folded into yet another suffocating hug. She blinks ginger hair out of her face, her eyes fighting bravely to adjust to the bright light. 

“Hermione! What did she do to you? Are you okay? We tried to get McGonagall to get you and then Dumbledore, too, but they wouldn’t. Please tell me you’re okay!” Ginny unleashes like a hurricane on her and Hermione has to stop to reorient herself. 

She reaches out, squeezes Ginny’s hands. “I’m fine, it was just lines — how’s your dad?” She finally surveys the scene; all of the Weasleys bar Molly and Arthur are seated around the table, not looking nearly as miserable as she’d expected. But the Weasleys have always trafficked in their inimitable optimism, so all things considered perhaps this response isn’t all that surprising. 

“Dad’s fine, mum’s with him now. Would’ve been worse if it hadn’t been for Harry. Though I reckon it’s going to be a long recovery for him, even if mum won’t own to it now.” Her nervous energy, though understandable, is overwhelming. 

“Blimey, Ginny, let her sit down!” Ron says, and Hermione shoots him a thankful look. 

When she sits, Ginny wraps her arms around her shoulders and collapses into her, whether from exhaustion or sadness Hermione can’t yet tell. Ron takes the lead in telling her the story, and immediately she notices how sullen Harry looks, barely grunting out full sentences in response to her questions. 

She makes the mistake of looking over to Fred, who looks so broken it takes all her remaining strength not to gasp. She doesn’t make the mistake twice, focusing all of her attention on Harry and his premonition. It’s cruel, it’s cold, but it’s what she needs to do to survive. 

✶✶✶

When they’ve had their tea, they fall back into their summertime routine of silently climbing the stairs and tumbling into Hermione and Ginny’s room. There’s an uneasiness to it all this time that makes this all seem like muscle memory rather than a desire to socialise, which is broadly confirmed when both Fred and George slink up to their room without a word. 

They sit silently for an uncomfortable moment, until Ginny tugs Hermione’s hand out dragging her thumb along the unblemished skin beneath the rapidly-healing cuts.

“17 Cherry Tree Lane? What’s that?” Hermione’s thoughts stutter out for a second, interrupted by the memory of sharp, overwhelming pain in her hand. 

“Oh, er,” she pauses, breathes, wills the pain away, “Umbridge found me this morning after breakfast. She wanted to know where you all went, but obviously I couldn’t do that because I’m not the secret keeper. So I wrote down the only address I could think of — it’s from a muggle children’s story my mum used to read to me when I was a child.” 

She looks across to Harry, the only person in this room likely to know the reference. His face is blank and he’s staring at the door, and Hermione is immediately reminded of the cruel reality of Harry’s life: nobody was there to read him children’s stories.

✶✶✶

“Ron you know you can not say embarrassing stuff in front of her?” Ginny says as she ushers Ron into the sitting room. Hermione, who was bored of the Fleur saga over the summer and remains bored of it now, does not look up from her book. She does, however, chew the inside of her cheek to stop herself chastising them for disturbing the silence of the room. 

“What’s he done?” George asks, perking up at the sight of his youngest brother’s scarlet face.

“Just babbled at her again,” Ginny says, and she can hear how hard she’s trying not to laugh. It’s strange to see them like this, Ginny filling the role Harry usually does. But Harry’s been so hellbent on avoiding all of them at least since Hermione’s arrived that someone’s had to step up and be Ron’s companion.

“Oh brilliant work, Ronnie,” Fred pipes up. Hermione looks at him, eyebrow raised in derision. 

“I don’t know why you’re so cocky,” Ron spits back, “you barely say anything around her at all!”

“I’m a man of few words,” Fred says calmly.

“Maybe if you read more you might have a bigger vocabulary,” Hermione responds, returning her attention to her book.

There’s silence in the room, and she glances up again. Fred and George are smirking, Ginny is laughing, and Ron looks shocked. She can’t maintain her composure any longer. 

She descends into giggles and for the briefest of moments, there’s nothing but laughter in her world. 

✶✶✶

Hermione gets bored of Harry’s angstier-than-thou shtick very quickly into the holidays, moving at first to ignore his foul mood and treat him as though nothing is different and then to seeking him out when he begins ignoring the group entirely. When he’d come upon her in the library just a few moments ago, he’d immediately turned on the spot and left, and Hermione, frustrated at his dramatics, had thrown down her book to follow him. 

After checking his and Ron’s room, the upper drawing room, Sirius’s room, Buckbeak’s attic, and the kitchen, she’s resigned herself to the unlikely possibility that he’d actually _chosen_ to socialise with everyone else for once. She pushes open the door to the living room and takes a headcount. It’s all red and blonde heads, and nobody particularly interested in noticing her entrance until —

“Viktor worries about you,” Fleur says, barely looking up from the papers scattered in front of her. Hermione suddenly feels very aware of herself and how little space she occupies in this drafty study. She feels very exposed, like she’s been stripped bare and hung out like an ornament. 

“Viktor?” she chances, her voice shaky. 

“Yes of course,” Fleur says in her usual clipped oh-so-French manner. “He wrote to me to say that he’s worried about you this Christmas. He said that your letters have been less descriptive, and so he is worried.”

“You write?” 

“Yes of course,” Fleur says again and suddenly Hermione feels very stupid. It should come as no surprise that the former Champions keep in touch, especially the foreign ones subjected to the trauma of Hogwarts in one of its worst years. 

Nobody else speaks, which makes Hermione feel even worse. Fred, she notices with some anxiety, has stopped whatever it is he’s writing to look at her, his face unreadable. She can feel her breath growing more laborious in her chest. 

Fleur, evidently, has little time to humour Hermione, “So: should he be worried?”

Hermione’s mind races through a million and one reasons that Viktor might justifiably be worried, before settling on: “Oh, no, I suppose I’ve just been a bit snowed under with all my work.” 

Fleur finally looks up and Hermione knows she sees right through her. It’s intimidating, to be looked at like this and know that all her well-designed defences are worthless. “Well, Viktor’s asked me to watch for you anyways, even though I said to him that you would not need it.”

Hermione nods tightly, tries not to catch Fred’s eye.

“That’s — that’s kind. Thank you,” she mumbles, uncharacteristically quiet. And then, wanting to save a shred of her dignity, she raises her voice, turning out to the rest of the room, “Actually, I was just looking for Harry, if any of you want to join me?” 

Ginny is up like a shot, tossing aside what appears to be one of her course textbooks. Ron, however, is much slower to leave, glancing sidelong at Fleur as he leaves the room. 

Eventually, they find Harry in his room, apparently having returned there _after_ Hermione had checked it. He looks especially sullen, and Hermione wishes she could rack up more empathy for him but she’s been _so_ emotionally exhausted lately she just can’t do it. 

She perches on the bed beside him, draining the last of her emotional reserves, “How’re you feeling?” 

“Fine,” Harry says stiffly, and she’s already bored of the act.

“Oh, don’t lie, Harry, Ron and Ginny say you’ve been hiding from everyone since you got back from St. Mungo’s.” 

Harry glares at Ron and Ginny. “They do, do they?” Ginny matches his glare and Hermione has to stop herself from being proud at Ginny’s resolve.

“Well, you have!” Ginny says. “And you won’t look at any of us!”

“It’s you lot who won’t look at me!” Ginny rolls her eyes.

“Maybe you’re taking it in turns to look and keep missing each other,” Hermione says, sounding perhaps a little too similar to Fred for comfort.

“Very funny,” Harry snaps at her, turning away. 

She’s _so bored_ of this. How many times did they have to go through hell together and survive before he would realise that they were there for him, even when nobody else was? 

“Oh, stop feeling all misunderstood,” she says sharply. “Look, the others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears —”

“Yeah? All been talking about me, have you? Well, I’m getting used to it...”

Ginny sighs. “We wanted to talk to you, Harry, but as you’ve been hiding ever since we got back —”

“I didn’t want anyone to talk to me,” says Harry, and Hermione hopes that at some point he will realise how melodramatic he sounds.

“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” says Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-KnowWho, and I can tell you how it feels.” 

For however winded Hermione is suddenly feeling, Harry looks infinitely more so. Good for Ginny, finally cutting through Harry’s nonsense. 

“I forgot,” he says, and the face Ginny makes is enough to break Hermione’s heart.

“Lucky you,” Ginny says.

The tenor changes from there, though Hermione wishes it hadn’t taken a reminder of Ginny’s trauma for Harry to shake himself out of it. Still, a win is a win and she’s happy for this one. 

✶✶✶

  
  


She hasn’t realised she’s been dreading Christmas until Christmas morning, when Arthur returns from St Mungo's and she and Harry are left to watch the happy and (almost) whole Weasley family gather around the Christmas tree. There are notable exceptions: Percy, who, despite having not been explicitly invited wrote ahead anyways to announce that he would be spending Christmas with the Clearwaters, and Charlie, who Hermione guesses remained in Romania. 

As Ginny begins to distribute gifts to the family, Hermione leans her head onto Harry’s shoulder, hugging him around the waist. He wraps his arm around her neck, squeezing her in, but saying nothing. She likes that Harry doesn’t ask her questions about how she’s feeling, doesn’t force her to confront emotions she’s not ready to deal with. It’s why, even after all this time, he remains her best friend. 

She’s trying not to think about what a better life would be like, if she could be home with her parents right now, listening to her dad sing terribly along to the BBC Radio Christmas playlists and helping her mum prepare their Christmas lunch. She tries not to wonder if they even know it’s Christmas today. 

There’s something so strange about life right now, how everything can be simultaneously overwhelming and completely inconsequential. The lights on the tree are bright, the fire in the fireplace is warm, the noise of the festivities is loud, but it feels as though she’s experiencing it all through a thick pane of frosted glass. Theoretically, spending time with her favourite people in the world should make her happy. Practically, she can only conjure up a vague sense of nausea. 

Ginny throws Harry’s present at him, a green jumper with the letter H embroidered on it in gold. It’s the same present he gets from Molly every year, and every year Hermione regards it with awe. She knows magic must help expedite the process, but there’s something so loving about the knitted jumpers. In all of this, when everything seems to be going wrong, that Molly has taken the time to knit sweaters for all her children (biological and adopted) is the greatest miracle of all. 

“Oh, Hermione dear, here’s yours,” Molly says casually, shoving a parcel into her hands as if it’s not a deeply moving gesture. For the first time ever, there’s a jumper of Hermione’s own in it, a deep sapphire embroidered with silver thread. She runs her fingers over the trim, watches the embroidery shimmer in the firelight, tries to imagine how it must have been made, how much time and care had been put into it. 

Holding back tears, she thanks Molly with a hug before turning and running to the bathroom.

She falls to her knees and retches. 

It’s all too much, it’s all so wrong. 

She shouldn’t be here, not at Grimmauld Place, not in the wizarding world, not in the early days of a war. She should be at home with her parents, curled up beside her mother, waiting to fall asleep during the Queen’s speech. 

When her stomach is empty and the bile stings at her throat, she pulls herself off the tile. She washes her hands in the grotty brown granite sink, cupping her hands beneath the faucet and bringing the cool water to her lips. 

The cold brings her back down to earth, makes her acutely aware of her own body, of the space it takes up. Her feet are cold on the bathroom floor, the back of her neck is hot. Her jumper is cutting into her hipbone where it’s been trapped in a lazy tuck under her jeans. Her bra strap, stretched by age and poor handling, sits on the very edge of her shoulder, threatening to slip down. These sensations are real. She lets the water drain beneath the gaps in her fingers, and then presses her cold palms to her cheeks, willing away the redness that has spread there. 

The sitting room seems like too intense a place to be right now, too many reminders of her life in flux. With all the hubbub of Christmas Day, she reckons she’ll be able to hide out in the kitchen for a little while without anybody registering her absence. 

She pulls a cup from the shelf, fills it with water from the tap, and boosts herself onto the countertop with shaky arms. It’s not totally silent in here, there’s probably nowhere in this entire house completely unvisited by the sounds of the Weasley’s Christmas, but it’s quiet enough. She rubs her thumbs along the thin, neat cuts on her hand, feeling where the skin has split and cracked under a magical knife. Never in her life has she been more thankful for her tiny handwriting. 

The kitchen door opens and shuts, but she doesn’t look up, expecting Sirius or Lupin or even Molly to get on with their business without asking anything of her. They’re good at letting her blend into the background when she needs it, there are other main characters in their stories. 

“Happy Christmas,” Fred says. She nods. And then there are some stories where she _is_ the main character. 

“Happy Christmas,” she repeats back, forcing a semblance of holiday cheer into her voice. He moves towards her, lightly grabbing her thighs and pressing a kiss to her nose. She straightens his shirt collar, fussing over the creases. The fabric is stiff, hardy stuff, there’s absolutely no reason in the world anyone should ever be able to crease it this much. She runs her finger over a particularly egregious wrinkle, over and over until she’s convinced this is a cursed button up, doomed to wrinkledom for all eternity. 

“It’s funny, don’t you think?” she asks when she tears her eyes from the wrinkle. 

He watches her with an intense stare. “What is?” 

“To think how different everything was a year ago.” He looks as though he’s genuinely considering it. Maybe he is. Even the inimitable Fred Weasley is not immune to the draws of holiday self-reflection. 

“Yeah, couldn’t do magic outside school then, could I?” She has to laugh, he has such a way of finding the silver linings, even in the angriest of storms.

She ducks her head, not trusting herself to mask the flood of emotions. She wants to give herself permission to be happy, wants to not be inundated with guilt for not feeling sad all the time, but it’s outside of her emotional toolbox for now. There’s no reason she should be sitting here, clutching at him and feeling the oppressive desire to be happy when there is so much pain and horror in the world, pain and horror that she personally could do something about. 

Fred pulls his wand out, and she looks upward in time to see him conjure mistletoe above her head. She huffs out a laugh against her will. 

“Rules are rules,” he says nonchalantly, tucking her finger under her chin. 

She rolls her eyes. “When have you ever cared about rules?” 

He doesn’t bother trying to answer, just leans forward and captures her lips with his own, sliding his hand up her thigh, up her hips, stopping at her waist and holding her steady. 

It’s always like this with Fred, this overwhelming feeling that maybe, just maybe, things aren’t always going to be so bad. 

She wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him as close to her as she can, not willing to let this feeling get away from her. For just this moment, she deserves this. 

Glass shatters against the flagstones, like a battering ram against the door of unhappiness. 

She looks to her cup of water. It’s still there. 

Her stomach feels like it’s dropped out of her body, and she gasps. Fred seems to have cottoned on at the exact same time as her, and the both look to the door together. 

Ron. 

“So that’s how it is, then?” 

She disentangles herself from Fred and drops off the counter. The plate that Ron had been carrying is shattered into a million tiny pieces at his feet, the remnants of mince pies scattered like fresh snow. 

“Ron I—” he gives her a withering look and she lets the words die in her throat. His eyes cast upwards from her face to meet Fred.

“You _knew_. You knew and you did it anyway.” His face flushes and she tries to move forward but Fred catches her wrist, holding her back.

“How long have you two been at it?” 

“Don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to,” Fred answers stiffly. Ron’s face falls.

“Ron I’m sorry,” she calls, as if it’ll somehow make things better, as if five years of friendship with Ron hasn’t taught her better. It comes as no surprise that he ignores her, looking only at Fred. 

“Yeah. Course you are.” He spins on his heels and leaves, the door banging shut behind him. 

Hermione thinks she might cry. 

“I need to fix this,” she says, fighting desperately to keep her voice steady. When she looks up into his eyes, her breath is taken away by how sorry he looks. 

“This isn’t something you can fix, ‘Mione. This is my fault for being a dogshit brother.” 

✶✶✶

Christmas lunch is mortifying. She seats herself very pointedly between Sirius, who seems surprised at her choice, and Lupin, who does not. Ron radiates anger from the opposite end of the table and Ginny has forsaken subtlety in her quest to catch Hermione’s eye.

Much to her surprise, Fleur has a lot to contribute to her and Lupin’s conversation about the rights of non-humans in the magical world. At first, it seems as if Fleur’s only jumping in to agree with Hermione, perhaps out of some misplaced sense of pity, but when she mentions her Veela heritage, Hermione’s stomach sinks. They’ve all been _so_ horrible to her and made her feel like such an outsider, and all for what?

“Because Veela are so similar to the things we have been taught to hate in women, we are treated as though we are scum!” Fleur says stiffly, pushing a brussel sprout around on her plate. “Maybe there is something to be said about the angrier parts of our culture, but from what you have said to me of this Umbridge woman, I suspect it is not just us with our flaws!” Hermione blinks. An image in her mind: the scorn she’d heaped on the Beauxbatons girls — and Fleur in particular — all for their perceived frivolity, their girliness. But Fleur had been a Triwizard Champion, she’d been just as brave (if not as successful) as Harry, and she’d done it all surrounded by women, without sacrificing the things that made her happy. And then, even after all of Hermione’s sniping, she’d still gone out of her way to be kind to her. She feels sick. She wants to say something, to apologise or to try and make amends in some way, but Lupin has already carried the conversation on and it would be too obstructive to cut in. 

She resigns herself to staring at the puddle of gravy on her plate, mortified at her behaviour.

When, at last, they all push back from the table to retreat to the sitting room for drinks, Fred makes a beeline for Ron and her heart cuts out. Ginny, who has been watching like a hawk, grabs Harry’s arm to pull him back. He starts to protest, but Ginny whispers something to him and his mouth slams shut. He looks across the room to Hermione and she bows her head, embarrassed. 

She follows Ginny into the sitting room, trying not to pay attention to Ron and Fred continuing up the stairs, each looking very sullen. Harry hands her a glass of something — sherry, she realises, when she brings it to her lips — and she hurries towards the periphery of the room. 

Molly, bless her soul, does the absolute most to prevent the various conversations from veering into shop talk or war stories. Bill, Sirius, Harry and George, who have very carefully backed themselves away from the general group, are the last to relent.

When they do, Mr Weasley glances quickly around the room as though taking stock.

“Where’s your brother?” The pause before George answers is just long enough that Ron’s bellows can be heard through the floor. The noise doesn’t travel well enough to make his words audible, but it’s unmistakably Ron. 

Hermione’s eyes find Harry’s and she swallows hard. 

“I’ll go get him,” Harry says, and Hermione is reminded for the second time today why Harry is her best friend. Brilliant, stupid Harry, who is willing to throw himself to the flames to protect his friends — even if those flames _are_ only Ron’s completely justified rage. 

So he goes, and although it takes an uncomfortably long amount of time, Ron eventually slinks down behind Harry, glowering as he falls into one of the empty armchairs. 

It is, all things considered, not one of Hermione’s better Christmasses. 

✶✶✶

Fred puts up with a lot of yelling over the next couple of days, and while at first Hermione is loath to disagree with his tactic of shutting up and taking it, even her patience starts to wear thin as the New Year draws ever nearer. 

Poor Harry, however, seems to be bearing the brunt of it, torn between spending time with Ron — who is surlier than ever — and not spending time with Ron — which only makes him angrier. Hermione, at least, can stow away with Ginny. 

And she does stow away with Ginny, more committed than ever to not letting this become her problem. Ron had made it very clear that he thought the betrayal had been on Fred’s behalf, not her’s, and she was more than prepared to take him at his word. (It of course didn’t hurt that both Ginny and Tonks had demanded she not apologise for something she had no business apologising for.) 

Instead, she turns to more productive uses of her time. When Ginny’s not feverishly reading everything she can to prepare her for the remainder of the quidditch season, Hermione sends her out to quiz the various members of the Order that pass through Grimmauld Place on what spells they use most frequently. It’s a task only Ginny can manage, her skill with finessing information out of people surpasses that of anybody else in the house. When Ginny’s away, Hermione pours over books from the Black family library, or gets Sirius and Lupin — Remus, she corrects herself, to break their war stories down into something more practical. 

By New Years’ Eve, she’s compiled close to several hundred inches of parchment’s worth of notes on potential curricula for the DA, enough to keep them going for months, if not years. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not an insurrectionary threat to You-Know-Who or the Ministry of Magic or even Umbridge, but it’s her contribution to the cause. She may not be the best dueller, and she certainly isn’t the best politician, but each line of tightly woven script bears the mark of her dedication. And nothing, nothing can alienate her from that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to roughly double the length of each chapter, so there's a chance I might be slowing updates to weekly.


	13. circle the drain, I'm going down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [bernie sanders voice] [soccer mommy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTc1w32Vbeo)

Partially to avoid Ron’s foul mood and partially to get out of the gloomy house, Ginny convinces their mum to let her and Hermione go to Diagon Alley on Boxing Day. It takes considerably less effort to convince Fred and George of the merits of staying out of Ron’s emotional blast zone for at least a few hours. 

Ginny, who swears she didn’t plan it, immediately runs into Michael, and disappears off into the Quality Quidditch Supplies. George watches her go, turns back to Fred and Hermione, and shakes his head. “I wish she’d warned me. I am absolutely not third wheeling here.”

“And then there were two,” Hermione says airily as George makes his way up the street. 

They wander the shops for a bit looking to all the world as though they are, in fact, two perfectly normal teenagers. In many ways, he _is_ the more normal of the two of them. Hermione, newly orphaned, has taken it upon herself to carry the weight of the future of the entire wizarding world upon her shoulders, to say nothing of her compulsion to succeed one hundred percent at everything she sets her mind to. Fred, by a worrying contrast, has spent his week wondering if he can send a hex by owl to Bulgaria, and whether or not that was a remotely sensible response to another man daring to be concerned for his girlfriend’s wellbeing. 

(The answer is yes, yes you can send a hex by owl.) 

“So,” Fred says when they sit at a booth, “ _Viktor’s_ worried for you, is he?” He tries to keep his tone light and casual, but it ends up sounding a bit unhinged. 

“I suppose so,” she sighs, tilting her bottle of butterbeer away from her. “I thought I’d been quite clear in my letters that I’ve got everything under control, but…” she trails off, and Fred realises she’s completely aware of his ulterior motive. And then: “Hang on. You – are you –” she stops, seems to recentre herself – “you’re not _jealous_ are you?” 

It sounds like she’s about to laugh at him, and if he’s honest with himself it’s probably totally fair. That awful, stupid pull in his chest tells him that yes he is _very_ jealous of Viktor Krum, talented, successful, rich, and exotic, and there’s no way he can reasonably hide that. 

But the (slightly more) rational part of his brain kicks into overdrive. She’s here with him right now, rosy-cheeked from the chill and _within touching distance_. 

Fred leans in, puts his hand behind her neck and pulls her into a hard kiss that leaves the worst, most primal parts of him screaming in victory. 

“Merlin,” she says when she’s recovered her ability to form words. “I never figured you for the jealous type.”

He’s not entirely sure she intended it to, but it comes off as a challenge. He’s a goner.

✶✶✶

“He’ll come around eventually.” George throws a soft quaffle into the air then catches it with the same hand. 

New Years has come and gone, and Christmas holidays are in their dying days. Ron has still not let up, turning every room he enters into a toxic waste dump of teenage emotional turmoil. He can only imagine how much worse it’ll get back at school with Umbridge acting as a magnifying lens for all their collective problems. 

Fred sighs. “I’m sure he will, but you know what he’s like. He won’t be happy until the whole world is as miserable as he is.” George hums, and for the briefest of seconds Fred feels guilty. And then —

“—you have to talk to him,” Harry says, bursting through the bedroom door like a character out of one of the Prophet’s comic pages. Fred looks up from his latest draft copy for the Skiving Snackboxes advert, surprised at Harry’s sudden appearance and brusqueness. “I’m serious, mate, I don’t want to deal with this anymore.” 

He stares at Harry for a moment, wonders if maybe he should let his stubbornness win here, let it keep him in place rewriting the same slogan over and over again. But the circles under Harry’s eyes are so dark, and it had only been yesterday evening when Hermione had worked herself up to the point of tears over the state of Harry’s health. So he knows that even if he doesn’t want to, he has to stow away his ego and solve his own problems. 

Ron is upstairs in the library, for reasons known only to him and the universe. He makes a move to leave when Fred enters, but Fred puts his hand out, stops him.

“We’re gonna have to do this at some point so we may as well get it over with.” Ron looks unimpressed. It’s up to Fred to force this conversation out in the open, so he drops down into the nearest couch, throwing his leg up on the coffee table. Ron stands, stares at him, doesn’t move. “Look Ron, I, uh,” he scratches his head, unsure of how to approach this. “I cocked this all up, mate, I’m sorry.” 

This works. Ron’s posture softens and he comes to the table, emotionally and physically. 

He unloads. It’s not like before, though, not so harsh and final. His voice is raised, yes, and he keeps saying things Fred wants to push back on (“she’s _my_ friend!”), he doesn’t rise to the bait. It’s better, he decides, that Ron says these things to him here and now, a controlled demolition, than accidentally letting them spill out to anyone else. 

When Ron stops to catch his breath, he seems to also stop to think about what he’s saying. It’s probably too much to expect that he’ll recognise that the way he’s been talking about all of this is bang out of order, but Fred can hope he’s at least stopping to moderate where he goes next. 

“I don’t have to like it,” Ron says pointedly, as if expecting Fred to argue back. 

“I don’t have to want to see or think about it,” he says next, when Fred doesn’t respond.

“And I don’t want you taking any more of my friends.” 

“I’m not taking your friends, Ron,” Fred says quickly, a touch too aggressively, and Ron narrows his eyes at him. 

“Well, whatever it is.” Before Fred can respond, Ron has vacated the room. 

✶✶✶

Ron gets better over the next couple of days, although he’s still behaving like a bit of a prick. There’s less yelling, though, which Fred counts as a victory. 

He and George get reamed out by their mum the day before they return to Hogwarts, and in response they barrel out of the house. They were going to leave the house anyways that day — they’ve arranged a meeting with a commercial landlord in Diagon Alley who will hopefully be ready to set them up with their very own storefront — but the early morning melodrama provides them a better excuse than anything they could’ve come up with. 

He does most of the pitching, he’s always been the presentation guy, and George does most of the negotiating, because he’s always had a talent for maths. The deal they wrangle is good. Very good. With a sizeable down payment (thanks entirely to Harry’s tournament winnings) they’ve managed to whittle the rent down to a negligible amount for the first year, which should give them more than enough time to establish themselves and bring their profits up. 

The problem, they find when the final lease is put in front of them, is the timing.

The shop is available from May. As in, May five months from now. It’s a non-negotiable. The landlord refuses to budge, and they can’t afford to pay rent while the shop sits empty. So when they put quill to parchment, it’s official: they’re leaving Hogwarts. 

✶✶✶

By the time they’re leaving to go back to school, Fred figures his wrist is healed up enough that it’s not worth bothering his mum with. Besides, without quidditch there’s not much going on that could put it at risk again. Without quidditch, he thinks, there’s not much going on that will even be _fun_. 

When he and George are reunited with their friends, he’s struck by the thought that none of them exactly know that he and Hermione are together. This, he realises, could be a lot of fun. 

They do their rounds, catching each other up on all that’s happened in the few (far too) short weeks they’ve been apart. Lee has been gifted a radio transmitter, which his mother locked up before he could return to Hogwarts but which, he excitedly notes, will be totally available to him when the year is up. Alicia went to Switzerland for the duration of the break, and her wind-chapped cheeks are evidence of a far more exciting break than anyone else has had. When Katie’s down recounting a fight her brothers got in, George opens his mouth to speak, but Fred cuts him off —

“I met a girl,” he says smugly, and George’s eyes shine bright. 

“What?” Lee says, already sounding offended. “And you didn’t tell me?” He glares at George, their appointed scribe.

“First I’m hearing about it,” George says calmly.

Angelina gasps. “You met a girl and didn’t even tell your brother about it? Who _is_ she?”

“Well she goes to Hogwarts, doesn’t she? And I’m a proper gentleman, aren’t I? So I couldn’t violate her privacy and have you hooligans going off after her.” 

Alicia bursts into laughter. “Oh please, there’s absolutely no way you could’ve hidden something like this from us.” Fred bites his tongue to hold back his own laughter. 

“Who is it?” Katie asks, tucking a leg beneath her. 

“I’ve told you I wont tell.”

“Is it Patricia Stimpson? She’s been making eyes at you — well, both of you — for years now.”

Alicia shakes her head, “Can’t be, she’d never actually work up the courage to talk to him. Could be Marietta Edgecombe, though, she’s always trying to get near him during DA meetings…” 

To a less practiced observer, it would appear that Fred has lost control over the conversation. In fact, the very opposite is true. As his friends build themselves up into a frenzy trying to figure out who Fred’s mystery girl could possibly be, he feels more in control of his life than he has in months. 

✶✶✶

George plays along like a champ, acting dejected and upset when Fred publicly refuses to tell him who the girl is, which only motivates Katie and Angelina more in their quest to discover her identity. 

It gets a bit annoying when every interaction he has with any girl at the school is immediately analysed with intensity by his friends, but he knows the payoff on this will be incredible. If nothing else, it’s a good distraction, from their departure, which looms ever closer. 

He still hasn’t told Hermione yet, hasn’t found the tone or the words to tell her. There’s a part of him that thinks he’s a narcissist for imagining that his departure could ever impact her in any way but a positive one, but then there are moments where she lets her emotional mask slip, and tells him how strange Hogwarts will be without him, and he chides himself for ever undervaluing himself.

So he continues to string his friends along, and he continues to procrastinate telling Hermione, and for now it’s a balance that mostly keeps him happy. 

Without the pressure of NEWTs to force him to pay attention in class, he and George begin churning out products at a breakneck pace, which makes him feel more confident about their future plans. Maybe, just maybe, they can make this work and prove everybody who has ever predicted failure for them wrong. 

The Dumbledore’s Army meetings are good for Hermione, really good. It feels like for the first time other people are getting to see what he loves about her. One evening, when they’re winding down a meeting, she leans over to Neville and says: “I mean, it’s sort of exciting isn’t it, breaking the rules?” and he doesn’t stop smiling the entire night. 

The snow melts and Fred almost feels a sense of mourning for it, as if this castle hasn’t been his gilded cage for seven years. He has plenty of decent memories here, sure, but they all seem to be melting away with the snow, replaced by the interminable weight of the imminent war. It’s even worse now that Umbridge has magnified everything he hates about this place. When the February rains start up, Fred decides it’s time to let his friends in on his secret and finally start to tie off his loose ends at this school. 

At breakfast, he charms Hermione’s cereal to spell out increasingly rude words. He watches over his coffee, keeping one foot still in his conversation with Katie and Lee as Hermione gets more and more exasperated. Finally, she raises her hand to silence Ron, who has not yet noticed the irritation scribbled across her face. She turns to look at him, and he tries to look away, but isn’t quick enough, and over the tops of several first years’ heads she shouts, “What? What could you possibly want with me this early in the morning?” Katie immediately stops talking, looking down the table at Hermione before scowling at Fred. Lee, puzzled, looks between Hermione, Fred, and George. 

(“If you really are okay with us going public, then I’m going to have to insist that we go public-with-a-capital-P,” he’d told Hermione in the library during the second week of term, a memory probably long lost to her coursework and other responsibilities.) 

“What are you doing to that poor girl?” Katie whispers at him. Fred ducks his head, laughing when Hermione throws a balled-up napkin at him.

At lunch, when he’s feeling slightly grumpier after Umbridge’s terrible Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, he gets a little lazier, repeating the greatest hits. The tiny balls of light dance around her while she eats, illuminating her face (and, crucially, her locket) as she makes an attempt at a sandwich. Ron grumpily bats one away when it gets too near to him. Lee asks him why, but George deflects for him. 

At dinner, after hours of hyping himself up for it, he shoots his shot. 

She, Ron, Harry, Ginny, and Neville are seated several feet away from them, looking largely unimpressed with the world. Fred slides onto the bench next to George, piling roasties onto his plate as he waits for the perfect moment. 

It comes not a moment too soon. Hermione leans back, pushing her hair off her shoulders, revealing the locket to him perfectly. He raises his wand, charming the locket to rise up off her sternum, higher and higher into the air. Hermione squeaks, her hand flying first to her throat and then to the locket that hangs above her. With a flick of his wand, the locket floats further up in the air, forcing her to stand. 

Several people are watching her, their expressions ranging from bemused to shocked. But she looks only at him. When she’s finally on her feet, he leaps up from the bench, striding up to her, trying to hide his smirk.

“What’s up, Granger?” he asks loudly when he approaches. He can feel the eyes on them, can see she feels the same from the spread of the blush on her cheeks. 

“Just hanging,” she replies, and he beams. She’s brilliant. He grabs the locket out of the air from above her head, and then grabs the back of her head.

When he kisses her, the hall around them explodes. Someone (Lee, he knows in his soul it’s Lee) wolf-whistles, and others bang the table. When he releases her, she doesn’t say anything, merely falls back onto the bench beneath her, looking stunned. 

✶✶✶

> **PROCLAMATION**
> 
> **EDUCATIONAL DECREE NO. 28**
> 
> **BOYS & GIRLS**
> 
> **ARE NOT PERMITTED**
> 
> **TO BE WITHIN**
> 
> **6 INCHES**
> 
> **OF EACH**
> 
> **OTHER**

✶✶✶

He almost resents how long it took them to integrate this into their normal lives. It’s not that he was ever worried, but watching Hermione slot herself into his group of friends like it’s no change at all is almost surprising. He tries to fight back the bitterness that they could’ve had this all this time, and to force himself to just enjoy it while he has it. 

Alicia offers to help Hermione study for her OWLs, which is good, because it’s far more entertaining to annoy the two of them rather than either of them separately. 

He and Lee stride past the girls confidently, pretending not to notice them until Alicia sticks her arm out to punch Fred’s side.

“Right, fuck off, we’ve actually got to study, you can’t come bother us just because you’re burnouts.” Hermione stares at Alicia, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, but it doesn’t matter because he and Lee are laughing so hard even Alicia cracks a little bit.

“We actually are studying, Spinnet. I’ve got twenty inches due on advanced colour-changing charms and I’ve only got fourteen so far.”

“Why don’t you just steal all of the school’s tape measures?” Hermione hums, her focus returned to her textbook. It takes Fred a minute to process that she’s not actually telling him off, and when it finally clicks, he grins at her. 

“Maybe I will!” 

He does not. 

He does, however, come up with increasingly obnoxious things to send flying in Hermione and Alicia’s direction. Lee manages to charm an entire chair to hover beside them before Hermione finally acknowledges them, sending a devastating scowl his direction. 

She raises her wand, unblinking, says something he can’t hear, and Alicia clasps her hands to her mouth to conceal her laughter. When she smiles saccharinely at him, he is struck by a wave of fear. 

He immediately looks back to his work, not willing to find out what she’d cast on him and not ready to dig an even deeper hole. Right, then. Charms. _Advanced_ charms. Something he’s had a lion’s share of experience with, a topic he can prattle on about for hours if given the platform. He can absolutely finish this essay no problem. He reaches for his quill and —

— and it explodes. Everywhere. 

It’s like the bloody thing has been shot through with ink, and then pumped full past its breaking point. Fred has literally never seen so much ink in his life. It covers his hands, the table, his essay, his jumper, probably his face. His blinks, genuinely dumbfounded. 

He looks up, feels ink drop from his chin, and knows he’s been got. Hermione and Alicia are clutching their table with white-knuckled grips, their faces red and their eyes wet from laughter. Beside him, Lee sounds like he’s choking on how hard he’s working to keep his laughter to a library-appropriate volume. 

He is so in love with her. 

✶✶✶

Hermione, naturally, is one of the first people in the room to successfully cast a corporeal patronus. He watches with amusement as the little creature bounces around the room.

“Weasel?” he smirks.

“Oh don’t flatter yourself,” though she smiles nonetheless, “it’s an otter.” 

The door to the room opens and Hermione spins around, her little otter disappearing in a wisp of white light. Fred, slower, follows her gaze in time to see a house elf enter the room, looking equal parts scared an aggrieved. 

“Harry Potter, sir... Harry Potter, sir... Dobby has come to warn you... but the house-elves have been warned not to tell...” The elf turns, running headfirst at the wall. Hermione and a few others in the room gasp in horror.

Harry, who looks uncomfortably accustomed to this behaviour, grabs the elf and asks, “What’s happened, Dobby?”

“Harry Potter... she... she...”

“Who’s ‘she,’ Dobby?” But Harry probably didn’t need to ask. Everyone in the room knew that there was only one ‘she’ who could possibly matter at a time like this. “Umbridge?” Harry asks, his voice calm but louder. Fred has always admired Harry for his ability to keep his cool in situations like this, for not tumbling headfirst into the emotional intensity others might. The elf nods, and more than a couple people in the room stiffen. “What about her? Dobby — she hasn’t found out about this — about us — about the D.A.? Is she coming?” Harry asks quietly enough that Fred has to strain to hear. 

The elf howls. “Yes, Harry Potter, yes!” And then that’s it, it’s all over. 

Harry straightens and turns to the rest of the room “What are you waiting for?” he bellows. “RUN!”

He doesn’t need to say it twice. There’s a crush at the door within seconds, and Fred turns to his brother. 

“Gregory the Smarmy,” George says, and Fred nods. Exactly what he was thinking. 

“Get Angelina and go. I’ll meet you there. If not… I’ll meet you in the common room?”

It’s Angelina who takes the lead, grabbing George’s hand and forcing them through the doors. In the chaos, Fred’s lost Hermione. It’s not that he needs to find her, she’s totally self-sufficient and can no doubt handle herself in situations like these far better than most, but in the event that she does go down, there’s no way he doesn’t want to be a part of that. 

He skids down the corridor that he knows will lead to the fifth floor passageway he’s after. 

There’s still no sight of Hermione. His heart beats in his head, and he’s panting, not for the physical exertion of running around the castle, but for the adrenaline coursing through his veins. _Has she been caught?_

He launches himself into the hidden passageway behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy, tumbling unceremoniously into Angelina, who heaves him off with a shout. 

“You okay?” George asks when Fred rights himself. It’s a hell of a question at a time like this. Is he okay physically? Yeah, probably? But what does this mean for everything else? If they’ve been discovered things are going to get so much worse here.

Angelina doesn’t wait for his answer, just shoves a broomstick into his hand. “Here, hold this.”

“Where’d you get it?” He twists it in his hand, it’s a pretty standard cleansweep, looks exactly the school-issued ones. 

“Transfigured it, didn’t I?” George replies, and as Fred’s eyes adjust to the dark he can see the outline of a quaffle and two sedated bludgers in his hands. “If my watch is right, we’re still within curfew and there are no rules yet against walking someone back from quidditch practice.” Fred nods. If it works, it’s brilliant. If it doesn’t, it’s ridiculous. 

By some remarkable twist of fate, it works. It actually works. Cassius Warrington, a particularly odious Slytherin, tries to hassle them, but when they easily present evidence for their excuse, he quickly fucks off. 

It’s chaos inside the Gryffindor common room. Half the people in the room hadn’t even been members of the DA, but it seems that everyone wants to get their piece of the minor rebellion. 

Hermione pulls him into a bone-crushing hug (a remarkable feat for someone so small) when they make it in, and George immediately begins toasting Angelina for her quick thinking in providing their alibi. 

“Harry’s not back,” Hermione whispers to him when George and Angelina are subsumed into the mass of teenage hysteria. “We couldn’t find him, we think he was caught.” She’s not even trying to hide her panic now, her face is contorted and her voice comes out in a whine. He takes her chin in his hand, turning her face from side to side to check for injuries. Confident that there are none, he reoriented to reassuring mode. 

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, he always is.” It sounds hollow, and even he’s not sure he means it. Harry is good and competent, there’s no denying that, but he does best when he’s got help. If he’s in there all alone… 

“Can we go somewhere?” she asks, and her voice is so small, so tired. 

The common room has never been this hot, has never felt so stifling. He trails his fingers down Hermione’s arm, snaking them around her wrist then down, knitting her fingers together with his. A gentle pull is all he needs to get her moving, to begin dragging them towards the dormitory stairs. It’s like moving through molasses, maybe the world really is slowing down, maybe it’s the adrenaline finally draining out of him. People shuffle and rearrange themselves to let them through, like a blood vessel dilating and constricting, done without thought but done all the same. 

The stairwell is noticeably colder, cutting through the thick knit of his uniform jumper like knives. He’s never thought about how many stairs there are between the common room and his dormitory, but now he counts each and every one, noticing the fractures and piques on every flagstone. 

Ten, eleven, twelve, pushing the rowan wood door open, checking to see that the room is empty, pulling her towards the bed, knees hitting the mattress and then collapsing into it. Her coming next, movements somehow even slower, weaker than his, and then arms giving out, bringing her crashing into the mattress. 

He wastes no time pulling her up into his arms, settling her between his legs so her head can rest on his chest. 

“All of those people—” she starts, but Fred knows what she’s going to say, knows that it’s completely wrongheaded. 

“— were there because they wanted to be and are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their own actions.”

“But I —”

“— _you_ aren’t culpable for anyone but yourself. And maybe Harry sometimes.” She goes silent, closing her fist around his jumper and letting her body go limp.

This is the memory he wants to keep forever. The faint pattering of rain against the window pains, the muffled din of excited voices in the common room, the smell of Hermione warm and familiar, the weight of her body against his and the gentle push and pull of her breath. Next year, whatever that even means, this is what he’ll want to be reminded of when he thinks of Hogwarts. 

“We have to leave,” he whispers into the dark. Hermione doesn’t move, but he can hear her breathing become more shallow. 

“In the springtime. We’ve got a shop on Diagon Alley ready to go. We tried to negotiate for a later lease start but we couldn’t manage it.”

Hermione sits up abruptly, and he’s grateful that the darkness prevents their eye contact; he can’t cope with making this day even worse. 

“Really?” Her voice is calm, measured, unrevealing. 

“Nobody knows yet, we signed the lease over Christmas break —”

She flings her arms around his neck and kisses him and it makes him wonder how he could have possibly worried about telling her. 

“That’s brilliant. You’ll be brilliant.”

“You’re not upset?” She runs her hand down his chest and he catches it in his own. 

“I’m sad, yes, but I can’t say I’m surprised,” she pauses in that way she does when she’s trying to find the right words to explain a complex problem. “I’m nervous, too. A little envious, if I’m honest, though that may change when all this is said and done.” She sighs. “But I’m happy for you, too. You’re doing exactly the right thing.” 

The validation is overwhelming. All he can do is hug her tightly to him and hope that that expresses all he wants it to. 

“You have to promise not to leave me the first time a beautiful, accomplished witch comes through your front door,” she whispers, sounding so vulnerable he can’t laugh even though he wants to.

“I promise not to leave you for the first beautiful, accomplished witch who comes through my front door,” he says dutifully. “The second, however, is fair game.” 

It proves how lucky he is when she laughs. 

✶✶✶

Later, he suspects that he’ll try to smooth the moral edges of their escape from Hogwarts, tell people that they always intended for this to be a noble crusade against authoritarianism and for whatever the fuck it is Harry Potter’s on about. For now, it’s enough that they want to piss off Umbridge and that Harry needs a distraction. 

They have just over a month. When George wakes him up one morning by bitchslapping him with that information, he wonders if it’s possible that time itself is speeding up, leaving him scrambling to keep up. 

He puts product development on hold for a few weeks, a relatively lame attempt to wrest back control from cruel Lady Time. He, George, and Lee cut more classes together, like they did when they were thirteen and first discovered that some rules were made to be broken. He makes more of an effort to annoy Alicia and Katie when they’re studying, reminding them when they complain that he’s just making up for time he’s losing. 

His time with Hermione, well… he tries not to think about it. He has no intention of this being the end of _everything_ , but it does feel like the end of _something_. He’ll still see her, there’s no doubt in his mind about that, but after he goes, the next time he sees her everything will have changed. He doesn’t want her to have to think about that, so he never says it aloud, but he can tell from the tone of her voice and the downturn in her lips that she knows it. 

He will not miss his teachers. Though they have all reached some sort of negotiated detente with him and George since Umbridge’s arrival, it’s not enough to change his feelings on the institution. It is what it is. 

So there is some sadness, yes, that’s probably unavoidable. But mostly, there’s relief. This seven year long slog is almost at its end, liberation day is nigh, and soon things will be as they always were intended to be: him and George against the world. 

He’s almost giddy most days, to the unending annoyance of Umbridge and her secret police. It eggs him on more to know that she’s fully aware something is going on with them but that she cannot possibly figure it out. He gets cockier with her, more callous. When she assigns him detention, he trains himself to stare her dead in the eye as he scratches line after line into his skin. Once, he swears, she looks away first. 

There are things he and George do for posterity’s sake; they rig up pranks in places nobody is liable to stumble onto for months, if not years. In the disused bathroom they made their lab, they charm a toilet seat to bellow a stream of crude words whenever someone sits on it. In the southernmost corridor on the fourth floor, they set a paving stone on a hair trigger, sending anyone with the misfortune of stepping directly on it hurtling down to the third floor. They’re mostly simple things, ideas they’ve had for years now, but there’s something fulfilling about seeing them come to life now. 

✶✶✶

“I have an idea,” Fred says, pushing his chair up onto its back two legs, “It’s not technically illegal, but it is _definitely_ a dick move.” 

  
George drops into the chair opposite. “Say no more, I love it.” 

Dumbledore is gone, vanished into the night like the mad cunt he is, abandoning the students to Umbridge’s tyranny. Her new secret police, the Inquisitorial Squad, have been breathing down his and George’s necks with the vigour of a rabid dementor, cratering their sales. There is, strictly speaking, no longer any reason for them to leave this place on positive terms. 

“Let’s fuck up some exams with fireworks,” Fred slides a crudely sketched diagram across the table to George. He considers it very seriously for a second, turning the parchment this way and that, dragging his fingers along certain lines. 

When he’s done with his charade, he looks up at Fred with a shit-eating grin.

“Wicked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay there's a chance i take this week off from updating. depends on how much work i end up having to do and how drunk i get on christmas. happy holidays all xxxxx


	14. blowing shit up with homemade dynamite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!!!! im back!! hope your holidays went well, if you were celebrating any of them. i have had my brain completely roiled by the announcement of lockdown number three (did you know 1 in 50 people in england has the virus right now? brilliant. loving it.) 
> 
> here's today's [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQsJ_FCCIMQ&ab_channel=Lorde)

With Dumbledore gone and Harry’s dreams worsening, Hermione is convinced there’s no chance she’s going to pass her OWLs. 

In her third year, she’d run herself into the ground with an overfull course load, spending every hour that she wasn’t in class studying or sleeping. Now, she spends every hour that she isn’t in class planning an insurrection. She should probably find it strange, out of her nature, but it might be the one time she can just _do_ without second guessing herself. This is probably what it feels like to be Fred. 

Lavender approaches her one evening in March, when the common room has been vacated by all but those OWL and NEWT students with a particular brand of self-hatred. 

Lavender never hesitates. She never shies away from anything, she never drops her eye contact and she never presents herself as anything other than completely deserving of the space she occupies. It’s something that Hermione found obnoxious originally, but is now tremendously jealous of. Nobody would ever tell Lavender that she didn’t belong somewhere because _she_ would never give them the chance. 

“Ron said you’d written out lesson plans for the DA that would last years.” She doesn’t sit, keeping a comfortable but noticeable distance between the two of them. 

“Ron said that?” Lavender just looks at her, as if to scold her for asking silly questions. It’s a technique Hermione knows well. Maybe they’re not so dissimilar, the two of them. “Er, I did, yeah. Enough to get us through the end of next year, at least.”

“Can we have them? Parvati and I agree that just because the DA can’t meet anymore doesn’t mean we should stop practicing this stuff. Even if we do have to do it alone.” 

Hermione is… well there’s no other word for it really, she’s touched. 

“I’ll — I’ll make some copies for you,” she glances down at her revision, trying to estimate how long it will take her to work through this, “and give them to you in the morning?” 

Lavender nods, “Thanks.” 

✶✶✶

She is not _not_ happy for Fred. She’s proud of him, she’s excited for him, and she’s confident he and George will succeed. But she’s also battling the part of her heart that feels nothing but sadness over his imminent departure. It’s pure selfishness, and she knows she needs to repress it every time the feeling rears its ugly head, but sometimes it’s so all-consuming she doesn’t think she can win the fight. 

_Nothing will change_ becomes her mantra, becoming the implied background noise to all of her thoughts in quiet moments. Nothing will change, they will still have each other, even if several hundred miles separate them. 

(And she _is_ lucky that it’s only several hundred miles separating them, unlike the several hundred miles _and_ memory barrier that separates her from the other people she loves.)

Fred and George’s escape plans begin to solidify as the first blossoms of spring dot the hills around Hogwarts. After that, their escape morphs from a teenage fantasy of rebellion against authority to intense and rather boring logistical negotiations; Harry needs to break into Umbridge’s office, Fred and George need a banner ad for their new shop. Fred and George need a show for the ages, Hermione needs something that won’t leave them maimed or dead. 

When Hermione makes the rookie mistake of bailing out of a discussion to go to the library, she later learns she has been put at a distinct disadvantage: they’re going to put on their grand finale in the middle of her history of magic OWL.

“Give me an hour,” she pleads with Fred the next morning at breakfast, “I’ll finish it in an hour, I promise I can do that.” He looks at George, who is pushing mushrooms around his plate, obviously avoiding eye contact. “It won’t change anything for you! There will still be plenty of people in the room and _she_ will still be invigilating. But it will change things for me!” 

“Fine. But only an hour. After that it’s not our responsibility.” She settles back onto the bench, placated. 

✶✶✶

People have gotten in the habit of making plans _for_ her _around_ her. Molly, who does it with nothing but the best intentions, owls her to tell her she’ll be staying at the Burrow this summer. Professor McGonagall calls her into her office to tell her that she expects her to become either a healer or a teacher, and then gives her a list of course and training requirements for both. Harry tells her he needs to talk to Sirius and that Hermione has to help him figure out how. 

Tonks doesn’t do that. Tonks takes five letters to get to her point, each letter filled with more probing questions than the last, interrupted by reassurances that whatever Hermione’s feelings are they are the right ones. Tonks’ last letter arrives a few hours after Hermione’s dreadful arithmancy OWL, and though she’s hardly in a state of mind to trudge through several inches of Tonks’ good natured rambling, she does it anyway. When she finally comes out with it and _asks_ Hermione if she’d like to stay with her at her flat in London for a month this summer, she responds in record time. 

_Yes. Of course, yes_ , she’d hardly needed to ask. An entire month of someone making an effort to genuinely level with her and engage with her where she’s at, instead of clinging to the misguided belief that Hermione is still a child. 

✶✶✶

If you’d asked her to diagram out how she had expected her fifth year at Hogwarts to go, she supposes that almost none of what’s happened so far would have fit into it. She _shouldn’t_ be surprised when Hagrid lures her and Harry into the Forbidden Forest to show them his giant half-brother, but it’s hard not to be. It doesn’t upset her so much as worry her that this appears to be yet another uncontrollable factor they have to be mindful of for the rest of the year.

So she takes it in stride, and when Harry careens breathlessly into the common room the evening before her History of Magic OWL, shouting about Hagrid having been attacked and McGonagall having been taken — unconscious — off to St. Mungo’s, it becomes abundantly clear that things are spinning out of control already. 

It takes a monumental effort to talk Harry off the ledge, to remind him that _they have a plan_ , that everything was meant to happen tomorrow _anyways_ , and that nothing will be made better by him running headlong into a crisis without any support whatsoever. Ginny, a saint, an angel in human form, a force unto herself, takes over from Hermione minutes before midnight, leaving her just enough time to begin packing up her notes. 

Outside, a gentle June rain patters against the window, a reminder that the passage of time is inevitable and indefatigable. 

Besides Harry, Ron, Ginny, and a group of frazzled-looking sixth years, the only people left in the common room are Fred, George, Lee, and Angelina, whose laughter has sustained a remarkable level of noise in the room going on several hours now. 

She’s unsure how to approach the elephant in the room; technically, this is only Fred’s last _night_ , and she’s undoubtedly going to see him in the morning before her exam, but there’s something so somber about this evening that she can’t help but feel that she’s obligated to address it. 

Hogwarts without Fred. It’s an interesting thought, certainly one she’d been trying to avoid not just since he’d announced he was leaving, but practically this whole year. She knows it’s silly to try to define an entire place based on one person, but Fred has always represented everything good about the wizarding world, and Hogwarts has always represented the opportunities of the wizarding world, and to have those things be completely distinct to one another for the first time in her life is… odd. 

She moves toward the stairs to the girls’ dormitory and Fred vaults over the sofa to cut her off. 

“Bed already, Granger?” 

“I was just…” she trails off, unsure of how to complete her sentence. She’s not even sure what she was planning on doing. 

“Trying to weasel out of saying goodbye?” he finishes for her, grinning cheekily. 

“You know that’s not what I was doing,” she sighs, her eyes flicking to the corner where Ginny and Ron are busy calming Harry down. When she looks back to Fred she says, “We’ve still got tomorrow.” 

He leans against the wall and Hermione can taste the bitterness in her mouth at him looking so calm and collected while she feels like the world is dropping out beneath her feet. 

“Are you ready for your exam?” he asks, voice low, steady, cool. She narrows her eyes at him, still not yet recovered from her loss over their departure timings. 

“I did speed drills today to see how many questions I could write a reasonably full essay for in under an hour.”

“And how many was that?”

“Six.”

“And how many are on your exam?”

“Three.”

Fred smirks and her temper flares. 

“Don’t you look at me like that. Just because _you_ don’t take your academics seriously doesn’t mean I’m silly for it.”

“I don’t think you’re silly at all, I think you’re underestimating yourself.”

She breaks eye contact, willing herself to look anywhere but at him.

When she was younger, barely scraping eight years, her best friend, Helen, had moved from Hertfordshire to Norwich — not exactly crossing the continent, but to the mind of an eight year old it may as well have been Beijing. In the weeks preceding Helen’s move, she and Hermione had found themselves at each other’s throats constantly, fighting over toys, turns on the swings on the playground, whose rucksack was prettiest, until it had broken out into full blown hair pulling and biting. When her mum had finally pulled them apart, dragging Hermione home to replait her hair at the kitchen table, she’d calmly explained that this sort of anger was normal, that sometimes when people couldn’t possibly begin to imagine their lives without someone in their lives, they would fight with them to make it easier to lose them. Replacing sadness with anger, she’d explained, was completely normal. 

It’s an instinct she hasn’t had to suppress in quite a while. With her parents, it hadn’t felt like they were leaving her, it had felt so transactional, so business-like that she’d barely had any time to emotionally register it until they were gone. Before that, she’d been upset when Lupin had left his post and yes, maybe a little angry, but after such an intense year she’d been drained of most of her emotional capacity. 

Now? Now anger is rising in her steadily, her loss of control over her whole life but especially this forcing a metallic taste into her mouth. This entire situation is not Fred’s fault, it’s really not, but he can be so disarming sometimes that it makes it nigh on impossible for her to keep her emotional hackles raised. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” 

“You just asked —”

“— I’m not asking about your exam, ‘Mione.” 

_Oh_. 

It’s a good question. They were about to go chasing after Harry’s nightmares, using Fred and George’s exit as a distraction. If the twins won them enough time, they’d break into Umbridge’s office and get Harry through the floo network to Grimmauld Place, to make certain that Sirius was safe and aware of the danger Harry appears to be prophesying. On paper it seemed simple enough. In reality, Hermione knows, it’s going to be so, so much more difficult. 

She mulls it over, considers all the ways it could possibly go wrong, and all the things she needs to avoid saying if she doesn’t want Fred to worry. 

“As long as you and George cause enough trouble, we’ll be fine.” 

When he smiles at her, her heart breaks. 

✶✶✶

It’s utter chaos, anarchy of the best kind, the freest and most pure expression of everything Fred and George had worked for over the past seven years, and she couldn’t be more in love if she tried. 

There’s screaming and laughter around her, electricity in the air as George soars above, tossing yet another firework into the Great Hall. On the other side of the room, where the staff table normally is, Fred lets off a whole spate of flash bangs which ricochet off every surface, sending papers flying. They meet up in the centre, dropping a whole load of confetti on the screaming students, and then fly out of the Great Hall — out of the castle. 

The reaction is instantaneous, a veritable flood of students chasing them out of the hall. She lets herself get swept up in it, running with everybody else out to the main courtyard. 

The sky is lit up in pinks, purples, golds, and silvers. There’s music coming from somewhere, but she can’t place it, and as she moves forward she’s transported back to the day at the loch, where Fred had showed her how he’d intended to ask her to the Yule Ball, where Hermione had finally realised that she was hopelessly head-over-heels for Fred _and_ that there was no chance he’d ever be leaving Hogwarts in a normal fashion. 

She pushes to the front of the throng of people, watching in awe as Fred cuts shapes across the sky, the cheers of students so brilliantly loud it’s almost as disorienting as the flashing lights in the sky. She can’t stop the laugh that rips from her throat. In this moment there is no Umbridge, no Voldemort, no OWLs, there is only her, her friends, and the wonder of magic. 

The screams somehow manage to get louder as she watches George paint a glorious picture into the sky, but the flash of red hair before her tells her the cheers aren’t for him. 

All too quickly, Fred jumps off his broom in front of her, pulls her close, swings her around and leans her backwards. When he kisses her, it’s brighter than all of the fireworks they’ve just set off combined. If his arm hadn’t been so secured so tightly around her waist, she would’ve fallen over backwards entirely. He pulls back, pressing one more chaste kiss to her lips.

“I love you,” he tells her, and she believes him.

She’s too shocked and deafened to do anything more than nod. 

And then he’s gone, and suddenly she’s not laughing anymore. 

As they soar away, each second bringing them closer and closer to freedom, Hermione feels smaller and smaller, like she’s melting into the ground below her. 

It’s Ron who pulls her away, taking her by the wrist and dragging her through the screaming crowd back, back towards the castle. She wipes a trembling hand across her face, drying the tears she didn’t realise were falling. 

Ginny’s ahead, trailing Harry more closely and arguing with him about something. She’s not sure if the noise from outside is echoing this loudly into the castle or if her ears are still ringing, but she knows immediately that she needs to pull herself together. 

It’s terrifyingly easy to break into Umbridge’s office, and there’s something almost nostalgic about it, as though they’re twelve years old again and trying to save the castle from itself. She’s filled with nothing but pride at Ron’s insistence on shattering several of her horrid little cat plates when they make it in. Ginny and Harry are still bickering when Harry throws himself into the fireplace, the emerald floo flames yanking him away from them. 

“What were you fighting about?” Ron asks when Ginny backs away from the hearth, her arms crossed tightly in front of her. 

She glares at the flames that lap against the grate. “Whether or not to call the Order. He can’t do this on his own.” 

“No, he most certainly cannot,” the shrill voice is unmistakable, and Hermione’s heart drops through her stomach. Ginny’s stony face is the last thing she sees before someone grabs her by the neck, throwing her against the cold, hard wall. A headache blossoms instantly, clearing her brain of all thoughts and leaving her with only an overwhelming sense of panic. 

“Where is he?” Umbridge shrieks. Hermione has never seen her so unbalanced before, so clearly out of control and struggling to catch up. _This_ will be the headlining feature of her first letter to Fred. She wishes he could be here to witness it firsthand. 

“Who?” Ginny asks, her voice frighteningly innocent. Goyle shoves his wand under her chin and both Hermione and Ron lurch forward. 

“ _You. Know. Who_.” Umbridge grits out, her voice trending ever closer to a dog whistle. 

“Sorry, professor, I thought he was dead.” 

The murderous rage that flashes across Umbridge’s face isn’t enough to stop the laugh that is ripped from Hermione’s throat. Even when Malfoy flexes his wand in front of her face, her pride in Ginny remains fierce. 

“Harry Potter. Where is he?” 

A flash of green behind her desk, as yet unnoticed by Umbridge, and then — 

“Here, professor. Is good vision not a requirement to be on the Inquisitorial Squad?” Harry. Alone. And despite the defiance in his tone, he looks terrified. 

Umbridge turns on him, her own wand raised, and before Hermione has a chance to stop and think, she’s crafting the most daring lie she’s ever told. Umbridge is the simple, banal kind of evil. They don’t need complex magic or profound emotions to draw her out of her cave, all they need is the promise of career advancement and a small overture to her bigotry. 

When they abandon her in the forest to Grawp and the centaurs, Hermione doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt. She catches sight of Harry rubbing the scars on the back of his hand and knows in her soul that this is the only way. Ginny, Ron, Neville, and Luna confirm as much when they reunite in the cloisters. 

There are other things that she knows are morally unavoidable, even if they are unsavoury. Climbing on the thestrals is one of them, breaking into the Ministry of Magic is another.

Her pulse hasn’t settled since the start of her OWL, which, she realises to her great horror, was nearly six hours ago. As she clutches the winged animal she cannot see, trying not to acknowledge the roofs of Buckinghamshire houses blurring beneath her feet, she lets herself imagine where Fred is right now. The new shop, she hopes, revelling in a feeling of freedom she can only imagine in her wildest dreams. It must be nice. 

It’s silly, _maybe_ , to be thinking about him as she quite literally flies to certain doom, but she can’t help it. _He loves her_. How could she not think about it? How could she not wish she had had the chance to say it back. 

It would have seemed impossible then, but six hours ago seems like an eternity. She thinks back on the girl she was then like looking at childhood photos. She had been so naïve to think that a mini tyrant at Hogwarts upsetting her during exam season could ever be the height of her problems. She had been so silly, so stupid, to forget that there was a war on, that she couldn’t afford to stumble and miss moments anymore. Then, everything was unconditional and unpressured; now, everything would be tainted by the threat of war. Would he believe her when she tells him she loves him? Or will it seem inauthentic, like a fit of hysteria conjured up by conflict? 

They hit the ground running — literally — in the Ministry, and something tells her this is very, very bad. Ginny keeps pace with Harry, and she’s grateful for it because someone needs to try and talk him off his ledge, even here, even now, and she’s not sure she’s up to the task. 

She’s never been inside the Ministry before, and she’s glad for that. It’s an imposing building, dark, gleaming stone with gold grouting. Everything in here looks unbreakable, like it had stood for a thousand years and would stand for a thousand more. Her only previous connection to the Ministry had been Mr Weasley, who was nothing like this awful, frigid building. If she’d known _this_ is the environment Umbridge came from, she might have hesitated a bit more at the thought of undermining her. 

When they emerge from the gilded lift at the Department of Mysteries, they begin breaking off into pairs for safety. She doesn’t even blink when Ron backs against her, the idea that in a moment of crisis they’d be the ones protecting one another seems as natural as breathing. 

When Harry approaches the glass orb that contains his prophecy, she grabs Ron’s hand for stability, and all the awful awkwardness and tension of the last year and a half melts away. This is what they are. This is what they are meant to be. 

✶✶✶

In all her years she has never been more proud of anything she’s done than she is right now of the DA. Neville hits a masked Death Eater with a stunning spell, buying them just enough time to make a break for it down the warehouse. It’s more composure than Hermione (frankly, perhaps unfairly) thought Neville capable of, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. 

But then they’re bursting through a door that they haven’t scoped out first and —

— hurtling headfirst into nothingness — 

— someone (Luna?) screaming —

— falling too fast, can’t move her mouth to scream out a spell —

— thudding into an unseen barrier, knocking the breath out of her lungs —

— falling again, her face smacking into cold stone with an unseemly crack.

If it’s only a broken nose she’ll be lucky. 

The taste of blood is new. Not that her mouth hasn’t bled before, but it’s usually through some fault of her own. She doesn’t want to spit, even here, even now, it’s too undignified. She brings her jumper sleeve to her mouth and tries to wipe the excess blood away, but there’s just _so much_ of it. 

And then it doesn’t matter anymore, they’re surrounded by columns of black smoke, and something hard and cold grabs her around the waist, dragging her backwards. 

She’s blinded until suddenly, violently she’s not, someone’s laughing, no — cackling. A woman, _Bellatrix Lestrange_ , her memory supplies the front page of the Daily Prophet from the day she escaped flashing briefly to the front of her mind. 

The scene is dire: Harry is surrounded, alone, facing down Lucius Malloy. The Death Eaters that have restrained the rest of them, she could probably identify them all if she weren’t so laser focused on Harry. 

Malfoy Sr. is peacocking, every word he says dripping with the same arrogance his little shit of a son has. He’s telling Harry that he needs to hand over the prophecy, that if he does it the rest of them won’t die. 

“Don’t you dare, Harry!” Ginny shrieks, ferocious bordering on feral. She struggles against her jailer — _Dolohov_ — and receives a barbaric open palm to the head for her efforts. 

Harry’s face falls and Hermione’s heart drops. He can’t, he mustn’t. Surely by now he knows that they’d all rather die than lose this fight, surely he must know this, surely, surely, surely. 

He reaches out and Hermione jerks forward, testing her human restraints. 

A loud crack sends her hurtling backwards, but there’s nobody there to break her fall — she’s free, even if it’s free to fall. And then there are cracks all throughout the room, louder than gunfire and ten times as terrifying. 

“Are you okay?” Someone’s in her face and she scuttles backwards, snatching her wand and flinging it in the air. “Hermione, are you okay?” 

Lupin. 

She whirls her head around, the room has exploded into battle, bursts of red and green and silver light and shouts, even the occasional maniacal laugh. 

Harry and Sirius are not twenty feet ahead of her, engaging Bellatrix Lestrange in what appears to be the most vocal duel in here by a country mile. 

Below them but further away from her, Neville and Luna are each holding their own against two still-masked Death Eaters, Neville stony-faced and Luna crying out in anger. They’re joined immediately by Tonks, who does away with the Death Eater fighting Luna with ease. 

Against all odds, the Order is here. 

She takes Lupin’s hand and he pulls her to her feet. The briefest of glances and a nod from her is all he needs to take off into the battle, running directly for Harry and Sirius. She takes her cue from him, turning and running towards the nearest corner, desperately seeking enough physical space to figure out what she needs to do next. 

There’s a flash of red hair in front of her, and it’s too tall to be Ron. She’s nauseated. 

“Evening, your royal prefectness,” Fred says like he’s greeting her in the common room before breakfast and not on a de facto field of battle. How can he be so calm all the time? How?

“Fred,” she whispers hoarsely, tasting blood anew. 

He grabs her face, holds his wand to it, and she almost blacks out. It’s a trick, a hallucination. They’ve been played just like Harry had been played. He’s not really here, she’s just being made to see him by Voldemort and she’s about to give herself over to death —

“ _Episkey_.” Her noise crunches and it shoots pain right to the middle of her forehead. He shifts his wand ever so slightly, aimed just past her ear and green light sprays from his wand, she hears something — someone — hit the ground, _hard_. “Long time no see,” he jokes, and it’s so stupid, so well-timed that she curses herself for ever thinking it couldn’t be home. It’s an instinct she’ll need to examine later, when she’s not surrounded on all sides by fighting. _If there even is a later,_ a tired part of her brain reminds her. 

Back-to-back is a far more viable defensive position for her than it is for him, given that he’s got nearly a foot of height on her, but it does mean that when a particularly nasty knock back jinx slams against her shield charm he’s inadvertently able to keep her on her feet. She grabs his thigh when she stumbles, steadying herself and then pressing her back further into his to give her purchase as she bounds forward to send Gregory Goyle Sr. careening into the ground, a foul spray of putrid acid erupting from his hands.

It’s just like they’ve practiced in the DA, she has to keep reminding herself this or her knees will buckle. 

_“But out there, when you're a second away from being murdered, or watching a friend die right before your eyes… You don't know what that's like.”_

Harry’s words last autumn overwhelm her, and she tries to force them away. God, how she wishes she didn’t know now what that feels like. 

A few metres away, two of the larger Death Eaters — Rookwood and Travers — gang up on Ginny, whose usually brave face cracks for the briefest of seconds. Fred roars, shooting curse after curse in their direction before he takes off running in their direction. 

It’s not enough.

One poorly timed spell knocks Fred’s wand from his hand, sending it hurtling through the air. 

She doesn’t need to think about what she does next, just shifts into autopilot and summons his wand to her hands before it even hits the ground. When she calls to him, he skids to a halt, watching his wand. 

He reaches into the air, his fingers barely grazing his wand before a flash of purple collides with his wrist accompanied by a sickening crack. He drops to the ground and a flash of green explodes above his head so closely his hair ruffles. The curse hits one of the still-hooded Death Eaters square in the chest, and he falls like a boulder dropped into the ocean. 

She’s screaming and she doesn’t even know it, her throat raw and her cries animalistic, interrupted only by the few hexes she fires off in the direction of Donovan McNair. 

Behind Fred, Ginny lands a curse on Rookwood that freezes him to the spot. It buys 

_Fred’s fine. He’s fine. He’s alive. He’s okay._ The thoughts rupture her blind panic like thunder on a sunny day. 

The curse that hits her in the back of the head strikes like lightning. 

✶✶✶

St. Mungo’s is nothing like a muggle hospital, except for when it is. 

There are no machines, no IV tubes, no heart rate monitors, no overwhelming chemical smells. 

But there are so many sad faces, so much crying, exhaustion hanging thick in the air like a dense smog: some things are just universal. 

She had never thought about what it might be like to be in a wizarding hospital — her months-long stay in the Hogwarts hospital wing in her second year had inspired some nightmares, yes, but no real desire to find out more about magical medicine. Still, if someone had asked her to describe what one might be like, she probably would have said comfier beds than a muggle hospital. 

No such luck. 

It’s a silly thing to complain about when her entire body aches like she’s been hit by a lorry, but the first thing she notices when she wakes is how uncomfortable the mattress beneath her is, how it feels like the mattress has managed to _add_ tension to her back muscles. 

The light is unbearable, ruining the darkness even behind her eyelids, and she tries to put off confronting it for as long as she can. Everything else must come to life first:

People are talking at a normal volume (which seems far too loud to her ringing headache), so she must be in an open-ward, not a private room. Good, that means she’s not dying. 

There’s coffee on the air, and a thick coating of lavender, too. She doesn’t know what that means, or maybe she does and the pain has blocked out that particular memory storage. 

She flexes her fingers and immediately regrets it. Her muscles are so tense it’s like they’re actually clenched. Moving just her fingers feels like trying to push against a brick wall, if the brick wall were also trying to beat the hell out of her. A hand covers hers and it _hurts_. 

Time to rip the plaster off. 

The light is blindingly white, and it feels like getting kicked in the head. If she were in an old-fashioned movie she’d let her eyes flutter open delicately, gently roll her head to look at whoever is holding her hand, smile happily, and announce that she’s so happy to be alive. 

But this is real life, and she’s in too much pain to put up any pretences. 

“That hurts.” 

“Oh thank Merlin,” Fred’s voice, uncharacteristically weak and tired. A new weight on her mattress, when she looks down to investigate its cause the answer is the only answer it could’ve been. Fred, head down on her mattress as if in prayer, hair falling across his profile, one hand in a bandage. 

“What happened to you?” she rasps, sounding as pathetic as she feels but more pathetic than she’s willing to own to. 

“To — to me?” He lifts his head, looking startled. She elects not to answer him, hoping that her silence will give him enough time to formulate an answer. It works: “Broke it. Stinging hex hit it.”

“A stinging hex broke your wrist?” She’d never heard of a stinging hex capable of breaking bone. 

“I’d broken it before and it hadn’t healed. The hex just forced the crack open again.” 

“When did you break it the first time?” They’d been apart for all of twelve hours, how he could have managed to break his wrist in that time —

“The quidditch match where I fought Malfoy.” 

Her eye twitches and he laughs right in her face. 

“You’re laid up here half dead and you want to yell at _me_ over one broken wrist?” He covers his eyes with his good hand, bringing it down to cover his mouth next. The sound of his stubble scratching against his fingers is… oddly grounding. A detail so easily forgotten that this moment could only be real. 

She sucks in a breath, realises that reality comes with certain conditions: “What happened?” 

To her great surprise (and even happiness) Fred doesn’t demure. He doesn’t even flinch. 

“He’s back — or, at least, everybody knows he’s back now. Harry and Dumbledore fought him, he escaped just as Fudge showed up.” 

“And Harry?”

“Fine. A little banged up but nothing half as serious as you.”

“Was anyone else…” she’s not sure if she even wants to know the answer, the chance that anyone at all could be hurt cuts her so deeply she almost wants to continue existing in this luminal space. 

“Ron got a little fucked up, took him a few hours to get his head screwed back on again — disorienting curse — and Ginny snapped her ankle. Neville’s nose was broken. George and I tried to convince him to keep it broken, he looked much cooler, but he said no. And,” he swallows hard, looks around at the ward to make certain no one’s listening to them, “Harry’s godfather got knocked around pretty bad by the Cruciatus curse.” 

“Is he—?” 

“He’s at home, he’s fine. Lupin dragged him out of there before Fudge was done accosting Harry.” 

“How long…” she’s unsure of what she wants to ask. How long ago was that? How long has she been here? 

“Three days. This is the quietest it's been. Mum only just left, she thought you’d still be asleep and I don’t think she could stand being around me much longer,” he pauses to look genuinely bashful, “Sorry.”

She has nothing else to say, though her mind is whirring to life. So Voldemort made a crucial error, he revealed himself too early, now he’d had to be permanently on the run again, but this time with the entire wizarding world looking for him. They didn’t lose anyone on their side — had they taken any Death Eaters down? Could this possibly have been their first win of the war? 

And what comes next? Can they return to Hogwarts? _Do_ they? Hogwarts is probably the least safe place to be right now, it’s a castle that functions as a giant flashing target, anyone wanting to win the war needs to get to the students there to ensure their lasting success. 

Fred, seemingly unburdened by these questions, stands, draws (by hand, whether it’s a sign of personal growth or of certain trauma, she can’t decide) the curtains, and lifts his chair up, taking it from perpendicular to her hips to perpendicular with her chest. From her bedside table — covered in flowers and gifts she’s only just now noticing — he retrieves a small vial filled with an upsetting violet liquid. 

“For the pain. And to put you to sleep.” He uncorks it and she nods. Her arms hurt too much to move, and he has obviously picked up on this. He raises the vial to her lips, and she drinks, cringing at the foul taste. 

It’s a devastatingly intimate moment, his forefinger tucked under her chin, thumb stroking the corner of her mouth as she empties the bottle. Despite the pain, everything is so soft now. She is truly at the mercy of other people — and she never wants to be like this ever again. 

He replaces the now-empty bottle on the table, dropping into his chair without an ounce of the delicacy or sensitivity he’d been conducting himself with before. She can see the heaviness in his movement now, the darkness around his eyes. He’s as exhausted as she is. 

The potion works… more or less. The pain subsides enough that she can take his hand in hers, and enough for it to not be deliriously uncomfortable when he lays his head down on her stomach. 

He’s asleep before she even feels drowsy, and she’s left to stare at her hands wondering how she can be in so much pain and yet look totally uninjured. Maybe her face is different, worse, but she doesn’t care to find out. For now, her achy, unblemished hands clasped around his are a sign that they’re alive, and that’s all she needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so at this point im sort of collapsing the book and movie canons together because i think the movie benefits from having several editors, but loses out for not having the same character depth as the books get to have. so if things seem a bit liminal in the canons, that's why. 
> 
> [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3HMz25LvnY) is how i envisioned fred and hermione fighting at the ministry because i am nothing if not a reylo simp.
> 
> btw sorry i keep getting nerfed by google docs messing up punctuation after italics. lemme know if you see it. i really hate our google overlords i s2g 
> 
> also in probably going to have to revert to a more ad hoc posting schedule because my energy has completely collapsed. masters degrees are hell. coronavirus is hell. hallelujah.


	15. and the days go by like a strand in the wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have noticed i revamped the story a bit — i combined a whole bunch of the earlier chapters so they're not so teensy, so if it seems like this is super short now, that's why.
> 
> also i sat down on, like, thursday and wrote literally 10,000 words of this in one day. this is an edited version of that. hello mania!
> 
> today's [tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5bgQjTmm3g)

She’d remained in St Mungo’s for the second to last week of term, slowly but surely coming to terms with the use of her limbs again. When the healer had told her that the curse that she’d been struck by had left some medium-term damage to her motor skills, she’d cried. 

When the healer left, she’d told Molly through floods of tears that she wasn’t crying over her loss of movement, but because years and years ago she and her father had gotten into a bitter argument about whether magical medical care had limits. Hermione, still at the height of her honeymoon phase with the magical world, had fiercely insisted that there couldn’t possibly be any limits. Her father, calmly and without malice, told her that that couldn’t possibly be true, and that when the day came that she found the limits of magical medicine, he wanted to be there to see it. 

And so she cried, sobbing hideously into Molly’s open arms, wishing more than anything that her father was there to watch her be proven wrong. 

It was decided, largely without her input (not without reason: she was barely capable of staying awake for more than a few short hours each day), to take her back to Devon and the Burrow when she was discharged from St Mungo’s. Bill had moved to London at the start of spring, and with the twins conspicuously absent from both the house and their mother’s conversations, the house felt terribly lonely. Molly had set her up in the living room, bringing down the mattress from Ginny’s bed and laying it on the floor — but also making up the sofa like a bed (“so you have options, dear, I don’t want this to feel like a prison”).

At first, she’s racked by feelings of guilt and anxiety when she realises that she’s intruding so thoroughly into their lives; poor Mr Weasley haz to tiptoe around his own kitchen in the morning so as not to wake her, making what she imagines are already horrendously complex days at the ministry that much more frustrating for him. But on the second day back she’s instructed to start taking a far more aggressive pain relief potion, and then it doesn’t matter what _anybody_ thinks _at all_ , especially not when she’s managing to sleep for a full fourteen hours a day. 

It feels so odd to be just sixteen years old and inhabiting a body that feels so creaky and broken. By her fifth day of home confinement, she begins to refuse to let Molly do anything else for her, even if it means taking five minutes to very painfully toddle to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Crookshanks had remained at Hogwarts, expected to return to the Burrow with Ginny, and Hermione is hopelessly lonely without his company.

On the sixth day, the pain subsides enough that she can sit upright for longer than an hour at a time. She uses the newfound freedom to start reading some of the books Professor McGonagall had sent back from Hogwarts with her belongings. They’re largely books she’s read before, spare copies of NEWT prep books, recent magical history books, some biographies. At the bottom of the stack, however, is a children’s book — _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. On it, a slip of parchment, with five words scrawled in tight, clean script:

_Required reading for any teacher_. 

Either her imagination has gotten much more vivid since the last time she read fiction or her pain relief potion has hit hard: it seems like every painting in the book is flying off the page, telling the story through inked characters living it out before her eyes. She reaches out to touch the invisibility cloak of an old man and discovers, to her chagrin, that she cannot actually feel it. She’s never wanted to touch something so bad. She knows that the cloak will feel velvety, with alarmingly soft embroidery thread carving out. She’s not sure why she knows that, but she knows she’s absolutely certain of it. 

She tries once more to grasp the cloak, watching it dematerialise between her fingers, and she cries out in anger. _This is so unfair_. Her hands move slowly through the air, and she wonders how long it will take Molly to come here and give her the cloak. _She’s not here_ , the last sensible part of her brain tells her. _She won’t be, not for hours_. 

She drops onto the mattress in front of the sofa, noting with glee that there’s no excruciating pain in her knees when she presses her body weight into them. _Fantastic_. She stretches out, catlike, across the mattress, grabbing the opposite end with her fingers and feeling every single vertebrae elongate. The scratchy wool quilt feels like silk to her skin, and she tries to bury herself in it, rolling over onto her back to nuzzle her way under it further. Dragging her fingers through her hair, she is surprised to find that it doesn’t feel as frizzy as she imagines it for once. There is no pain and her hair feels controlled. Today is a good day. 

Rolling over onto her stomach once more, she kicks her legs into the air just to prove she can and buries her face into the wool blanket and the thin mattress to revel in the feeling of something, anything against her face. The door bangs open — it’s not anyone’s fault, that front door is barely hanging on its hinges after years and years of wanton abuse by careless teenage boys and a very spirited teenage girl. 

Her hair lands on her shoulders with a bounce when she tosses her head around to greet her new guest. 

_Oh._

He’s tall, with legs a mile high, tucked into tan chinos and — _wow_ — since when could chinos look that good? Especially when paired with a rather boring button down, but god, if button-downs could look like _that_ at school she’d probably have never made it out alive. Seriously, whose chest looked that good in a boring Oxford shirt? Ridiculous. Completely unnecessary, bordering on antagonistic, there was no need for —

“You’re hot.” Since when did she slur her words that badly? 

He laughs at her, _actually laughs at her_ , and she lets her head fall into her hands as she looks away from him, angry. How could he laugh at her? She’s very, very serious! And she should be taken seriously when she says things! 

“Well at least I know you’re not delirious.” He slides onto the couch, pressing his forearms to his thighs and leaning forward on them to get closer to eye level with her. He smells of gunpowder and... and what she imagines sex smells like. Fred Weasley has _grown up_. 

“I’m not!” She flips over onto her back and tries to kick him, missing spectacularly. He catches her foot, delivering it gently to the ground. 

“You sure you should be doing that?”

“I can do whatever I want!” He narrows his eyes. His tongue darts out, sliding back in at the corner of his mouth. She wonders how she can make him do that again. 

“Oh I’m not denying that you _can_ , I’m asking if you _should_.” She taps her finger to her lips pensively. He makes a good point. She’s proven she can, does that mean she needs to keep going? But how often does she get to really prove her point, without having to wind back for fear of upsetting someone? And besides, he’s not going to tell on her. Nobody that hot could possibly tell on her. 

She plants her feet on the mattress in front of him, knees bent. When she opens her mouth to speak, she lets her legs fall to either side of her, open wide. 

“You’re hot,” she repeats. She watches with great interest as his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he swallows, his pupils blown wide as his gaze travels slowly, painfully slowly up her bare legs. She’s getting what she wants. 

He swallows again. 

Raises his wand. 

Looks her straight in the eyes.

“Crucio.” 

Her vision goes white, her teeth shriek as they grit against one another and her mouth is filled with an acrid taste — blood.

When the pain hits, her neck snaps backwards, her head making contact with the marble floor with a deafening crack. 

Every muscle in her body contracts at once, over and over and over again, threatening to crush her bones to dust. 

Something electric zaps through her brain, and her eyes fly open.

She’s back in the Ministry. Cold, alone, her screams echoing outwards into the abyss. 

Bellatrix Lestrange is here. She can’t see her, can’t hear her, but she knows she is. She can feel her presence stalking her, waiting for the moment to strike. But there’s nothing she can do, the pain is too much, too intense.

“Hermione,” the voice is soft, gentle, distant. “Hermione, my sweet, come back to me.” She tenses, this time of her own volition, daring her muscles to tighten harder than the curse ever could. Slowly, slowly, each one locks into place, bearing down on her and then — 

Lightness.

“Hermione, you must open your eyes now.” She does, trusting.

“Fleur?” 

“You were sleeping poorly —,”

“—a nightmare —,” says Bill Weasley from behind her. 

Fleur nods, looking grateful. “ — a nightmare. You were having a nightmare.” She smooths Hermione’s hair down, an eminently maternal gesture. 

Hermione pulls herself up to a seated position, wincing with regret as her muscles scream in protest. “What are you doing here?” 

“We’re collecting some of my old stuff,” Bill says, ambling into the kitchen. “A friend of Fleur’s has just moved to London and she’s got nothing in her flat, so I volunteered some of my stuff to get her started.”

“Verity, we were at school together! She preferred to move here after I said to her how much I was enjoying it. And Bill,” she looks proudly in his direction, “asked his brothers if she could have a job in their shop.” 

It’s a lot of information to onboard, straight out of a nightmare where she’d thought she was dying. Fred and George were successful enough already to hire additional employees? And they were hiring Fleur’s friends? Why was she suddenly in a foul mood?

“That’s very kind of them,” she manages.

“She is such a pretty and happy girl, I think she would make a great match for one of them. Perhaps not George, I know that girl from your school is with him so often.” 

“Angelina,” Bill calls from the kitchen. “They’ve been dating for ages, Fleur. And besides, Fred is —,”

“— Tonks tells me you’re coming to live with her in London when you are better!” Did Fleur really not know she and Fred were together? But if she’d been spending enough time at the shop to notice Angelina hanging around, then surely she must have come up? Unless Fred _had_ decided the real world was too big and full to merit him losing any time thinking about her. It had only been a few weeks, could he have forgotten her already?

“Er, yes,” she says, tearing through the skin on her bottom lip.

“You must come visit us!” Hermione nods.

Fleur is satisfied, Hermione, mortified. 

✶✶✶

Ron and Ginny arrive home the following day, Harry having been banished to Surrey once again. Ron’s year-long dourness has been miraculously replaced with a kind of calm joy that Hermione can scarcely understand (“well we were proved right, weren’t we?”), but is more than happy to accept anyways. Ginny, by contrast, has taken the week since her near-death experience to reevaluate her life entirely.

“I dumped him,” she says gleefully, throwing herself down onto the mattress beside Hermione. Crookshanks, spotting an opening, plods into her lap, demanding attention. Ron sniffs loudly from his perch on the couch behind Hermione and then, coming to terms with the improbability of him steering the conversation away from this, jumps off the back of it, heading straight up the stairs. “He didn’t even come see me in the hospital wing!” 

She hadn’t realised Ginny had required hospitalisation: “How long were you in for?”

“Just a few hours,” Hermione huffs out a laugh at the pettiness of it, “But it’s the principle, you know? Dean was there right away, walked me around and everything, bless him.” 

“Dean Thomas?”

“Is there another Dean?” No, she supposes not. “Anyways you need to go to London as soon as you can.” 

“Sorry?” 

“If you’re in London I can just tell mum I’m going to visit you and then she won’t fuss over it.”

“And instead you’ll be visiting… Dean.” 

“Obviously.” _Oh. Obviously_. 

✶✶✶

Summer at the Burrow is unlike summer anywhere else. The verdant, lush greens of the springtime landscape mature into jewel tones as far as the eye can see. The heat hangs heavily in the air, drier than the rest of the country, but still sticky to the touch. She’s strong enough now to take slow walks through the surrounding countryside, sometimes accompanied by Ron, sometimes by Ginny, sometimes by both, and sometimes neither. It feels good to stretch her frozen joints under the watchful eye of the summer sun. The air is still, calm, except for the occasional breeze whispering through the tall grass, she is almost at peace here. When she closes her eyes, lets the sun’s rays redden her cheeks and warm her hair, she is _almost_ able to forget everything. 

Getting out of bed is still a production, but with each passing day she is stronger, and fewer and fewer tears fall when she stands for the first time in the morning. By the end of June, she is restless, and even Molly comes to admit that Hermione is functioning independently enough now that London can be delayed no longer. 

Fred has been conspicuously absent from the Burrow, and what presence he does have there is limited to Molly’s ongoing frustration at the twins’ life choices. Harry, too, is a gaping hole in her life right now, and all the letters she sends him don’t feel nearly close enough to having him there with her. Ginny and Ron, who have never, ever lived in such a quiet house are climbing the walls, constantly switching between sniping at one another and being utterly inseparable. 

The Order meetings continue at Grimmauld Place, which means they are privy to absolutely none of the information. She’s bitter about it, sure, but she’s almost grateful for it — some days are so peaceful she can delude herself into thinking there’s no war at all. 

Tonks trails Molly and Mr Weasley (Arthur, she reminds herself, he’d been insistent she call him Arthur now) home after an Order meeting, practically bubbling over with excitement when she tells Hermione she’s coming back to London with her. Molly dotes on her in the last few minutes before she leaves, filling her arms with baked goods and medicinal potions and an entire knit blanket (burying poor Crookshanks) before she peppers her face with kisses. 

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Or if we’re not about, get Bill.”

“Or Fred, _mum_ ,” Ginny says tersely. Molly looks angrily at Ginny, who rolls her eyes. 

There’s a whirlwind of hugs and goodbyes, and then she’s stepping through the fireplace straight into a bright, modern Camden Town flat. 

Tonks’ flat is nothing short of incredible. High ceilings with massive windows, the walls painted a vibrant yellow, and thousands of books and trinkets stacked floor-to-ceiling against every wall. There’s art everywhere, on the walls, on the floors, leaning against plush chaises and on top of every flat surface she can see. 

Tonks relieves her of the pile of stuff she’s carrying, and then nods towards the corridor. 

“C’mon love, I’ll show you your room.” _Your room_. Hermione follows wordlessly, utterly bewitched. 

Tonks pushes open a dark wood door and Hermione has to lean against the threshold to keep herself from collapsing. Two massive, industrial bookcases face her, an enormous bed, draped in light floral bedding wedged between them. There’s an enormous dresser next to a beautiful, modern white desk. Two sets of curtains hang off an iron curtain rail, one thick, tan wool, the other white gauze. A little clamshell cat bed sits at the foot of her bed, several wool balls nestled inside. 

_It’s perfect_. 

Tonks rubs the back of her neck, messing up brilliant fuchsia hair. “There were a lot of books in the family library, see, so Fred came over for a couple nights and helped sort through the ones you’d like.”

She sounds like she’s going to try to say more, but Hermione cuts her off, pulling her into a massive hug, as tight as she can imagine with her screaming joints. She’s trying so hard not to cry but she’s got no self-control anymore and her cheeks are already soaked. 

“Thank you,” she stutters out. She releases Tonks — who is beaming — and sloppily wipes tears from her face. “I’m so sick of crying, I’m so sorry. This is just…” she turns to look at the bedroom and another sob rips out of her, “This is perfect. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.” 

Tonks shakes her head, bashful, “Say nothing of it. I had a lot of fun putting it together. Good practice.” Hermione steps forward, fingering the soft cotton of the bedspread. “Anyways, er, take your time and get settled in. I’ll get us up some tea when you’re ready.”

She manoeuvres herself onto the floor in front of her trunk as quickly as her aching body will allow, opening it and laughing through her tears when she hears Tonks shatter something out in the hallway. She’s so happy she can hardly contain it. 

The street outside the flat is chock full of people when she finally comes out of her room in search of food. She’s been to London plenty of times before, knows what it’s like, but has never been able to experience it like this, not as a tourist but as someone who could conceivably be part of it. It’s electric. 

She stares out the window, watching the various punks, goths, and put-upon businesspeople negotiating the congested pavement below. 

“We can go out whenever, it’s brilliant,” Tonks says from behind her, startling her. She nods in response, suddenly unsure if she’s up to it. Bustling crowds are a long way from the peace and quiet at the Burrow, the thought of getting jostled about amongst thousands of people has her hackles raised. 

Tonks, she learns, is not a cook, but compensates by being a dab hand at ordering the best takeouts in Camden. It’s been so long since she’s had a proper curry, she practically melts into it, even if her obvious lack of appetite insists she mustn’t. 

Every meal they try at least one new thing, and it feels like she’s getting a culinary world tour from the comfort of Tonks’ flat. By the middle of her first week, she hasn’t left the house once, but has eaten food from India, Malaysia, Ghana, Lebanon, and Mexico. It’s life like she’s never lived it before. 

“Can I ask you something a bit strange?” she asks over a takeaway cup of a margarita one evening. 

“‘Course,” Tonks replies, mouth full of jackfruit taco. 

“When I got here, you said that putting together my room was practice. What did you mean by that?” Tonks looks down, colour rising in her cheeks. 

“This war, er, this war has made me rethink a lot of things. Families and all that, y’know. I never really liked mine — the extended family you’re well aware of — but I always wanted one of my own. And I figured since this war is changing a lot for a lot of people, it made sense that I could try and change what families are like too, y’know?” Hermione nods, licking the stinging lime juice off her bottom lip. “Well, so, turns out other people were thinking the same way. And, y’know, Remus was keen for it so we figured we’d give it a shot.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were together!” She’d have to write Ginny immediately, she’d be thrilled to know her instincts were right. 

Tonks cackles, loud and bright and totally unbridled. “We are absolutely _not_ together, right poofter he is.” Hermione blinks once. Then twice. 

“Sorry?” The colour rises in Tonks’ face and then she’s laughing again. 

“Oh, love,” she pauses to laugh again, “Gay. He’s gay. Gayer than Christmas in Soho. I am, too, but you knew that.” _Did she? Had she missed a memo?_ “Anyways we both figured that with the war and whatnot there’s a scant chance we’re going to start our own traditional families, so we might as well start one of our own.” She’d never thought of Lupin as a family man before, but now, looking back on, well, _everything_ , she can't say she’s surprised.

“You’ll be a great mum,” Hermione says with her whole chest. 

✶✶✶

She owls Ginny the morning of her first Thursday in London to tell her she’s finally feeling well enough to go into town properly, in other words: warn Dean that your arrival is imminent. Ginny’s response comes mere hours later: _tomorrow_. 

Getting dressed properly for the first time in a month is a strange sensation. A skirt, which she would probably feel most comfortable in, feels too unnatural on her, so she carefully, unhappily pinches herself into her jeans, wondering if it's too radical to hope for a return of flared jeans. Shoes are even worse, she has to completely re-lace her trainers twice before finding a configuration that doesn’t feel like a vise grip, though it still takes nearly an hour of walking around before her gait eases out of a limp. 

She walks with Tonks to the tube station, where they split: Tonks on the Northern Line train to Kennington for Westminster, and Hermione on the Northern Line train to Elephant and Castle for Monument. She thinks she’d perhaps overestimated her pain threshold when a commuter stumbles into her and it feels like her entire body has been engulfed in flames. Gripping the handlebar, she counts backwards in her head from a million, biting down on her lip so hard she’s certain it must be spilling blood. 

Against the odds, she makes it, hobbling out of Monument station and towards Leadenhall Market and the Leaky Cauldron with a renewed sense of ability. Ginny, truly a product of her family, is never on time for anything, which is ideal because it gives Hermione time to pen a long-overdue letter to Viktor, who had sent flowers and well wishes when she was in hospital that she’d not yet thanked him for. 

A few minutes shy of an hour after they’d agreed to meet, Ginny materialises in the Cauldron’s fireplace, looking like she’d spent every minute of that hour addressing her appearances. It’s undeniable, she looks great, her natural confidence spilling out of her in spades. Hermione tells her as much and Ginny grins, taking Hermione’s hand in hers. 

“We’re meeting at Flourish and Blotts in half an hour. I’ll walk you to the shop?” Hermione nods, grateful for the company.

There’s no reason in the world that she should be as nervous as she is, but a very old anxiety has been rekindled in her, made infinitely worse by being in London and surrounded by highly successful people constantly dressed to the nines. And she hasn’t seen Fred in almost a month, and in all that time he’s been surrounded by all these accomplished, beautiful people. And she’s sixteen years old and her body is failing on her. 

Diagon Alley is bleak. That’s the only word for it. As a child, her parents had sometimes described what high streets looked like in the 1970s at the height of the oil crisis. She imagines that they’d looked something like this. The street is more or less devoid of all people, those who are there keep their heads down and their voices lowered. She and Ginny stick out like a sore thumb and it’s frightening. They follow the natural curve of the street, passing countless barren shop windows, Ginny talking all the time just to fill the silence. 

She could see the shop from outer space. It’s the only truly _alive_ thing in the entire area. There’s a queue out the door and she gasps. Even Ginny, rarely surprised by anything, stops speaking to gaze upon the shop in awe. 

“Blimey,” Ginny rasps, and Hermione nods. Blimey, indeed. 

“You’ll be okay?” Ginny asks ten minutes later when they’ve cleared the queue. “Are you sure? I’m sure Dean wouldn’t mind if we met in here first,” she insists when Hermione nods. But Hermione sends her on her way, determined to manage at least this by herself. 

When she steps through the swinging double doors into Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, it’s like stepping into a dream. The shop is massive, with not one but _two_ mezzanine floors, filled to the brim with countless products, many of them she’d never even seen. 

It feels wrong to call something so obviously magical _magical_ , but there’s no other word for it. She’s never in her life seen anything like this. It feels like the first time she’d laid her eyes on Hogwarts and felt her world tripling in size. It’s so bright, nothing but fluorescent colours and sugary smells and tinkling bells, it’s overwhelming in the best way. Her heart pounds in her head, as if to thud out _in-love_ , _in-love_ , _in-love_. 

It only takes two very small wizards bumping into her for her to realise she’s going to be totally unable to navigate the shop floor without a tremendous amount of pain, so she sticks to the perimeter, moving slowly through each product category, touching everything she can just to prove to herself that it’s not a dream. The shop is so loud she can barely hear her own thoughts, touch is the last true sense she has left. 

The sensory overload isn’t enough to drown out the roiling anxiety in her chest, and once she’s completed a full loop of the ground floor, she admits to herself that it’s time to seek Fred out. But a quick survey of the situation tells her she’s going to struggle to do that without wading into the undulating mass of people.

Someone catches her eye. Tall, thin, platinum blonde hair down to her waist, dressed in a purple blazer and trousers. _Verity_. This must be Verity. Her heart falters. She’s beautiful, tall, slim, with perfectly straight, shiny blonde hair, so much like Fleur’s. And what’s worse is that without being able to see either Fred or George, she’s going to be Hermione’s best chance at getting to somewhere more comfortable. 

Hands trembling from exertion, she crosses the floor, marvelling at how the shop seems to get larger with each new vantage point. 

“Excuse me?” Hermione calls when she’s close enough to be sure her voice can be heard over the din. Verity’s head snaps up, retail-smile plastered on her face.

“Good morning! How can I help you?” _Even her voice is beautiful._

The jealous monster in Hermione’s chest roars, and she silences it with memories of what happened the last time she judged a pretty French blonde at first sight. 

“I’m, er, I’m here to see Fred Weasley.” Verity’s expression shifts to one of pity, and Hermione’s is overcome by embarrassment. Maybe Fred _had_ been talking about her, complaining about Hermione’s condition, how quickly her feeble body had been broken almost beyond repair. 

“I’m so sorry, my sweet, Mr Weasley can only be seen by appointment.” She almost laughs. _Mr Weasley? Oh please._

“Actually he’s expecting me,” she says, not half as confident as she’d hoped. He’s most certainly _not_ expecting her, but she’s not having this surprise trip ruined by her lack of an appointment with her own boyfriend. Verity looks her up and down and Hermione feels all of her own flaws keenly, wondering if she can find a bathroom to smooth out her hair, or, better yet, hide her face entirely. 

“Mmm. Follow me then, please.” She sounds as unimpressed as she looks, and Hermione regrets ever leaving the Burrow. 

Verity guides her up the stairs, long legs taking the stairs two at a time, yet with all the grace of a ballerina. A young boy, probably no older than twelve years, bumps into Hermione’s arm and she fails to repress a squeak as her arm thrums in agony. Another little girl treads on her toes, and tears prick at her eyes, whether out of pain or embarrassment she’s unsure, not that it even matters at this point. 

Finally, when she’s giving serious thought to turning around and fleeing the shop, Verity brings her to an inconspicuous wood door that looks entirely at odds with the bombastic décor of the rest of the shop. 

“Mr Weasley?” she calls. There's that name again, if she weren’t so focussed on trying to hold her failing body together, she’d roll her eyes. 

“Yes Verity my dear?” Fred’s voice returns and her body goes cold. _My dear?_

“Someone here to see you, sir?” _Sir? Sir?!_ She’s going to be sick. 

“There shouldn’t be!” Verity looks at Hermione expectantly, brow arched in derision. Hermione has never felt smaller or more worthless in her life. She’s going to be humiliated here, left hanging outside her own boyfriend’s office, biting back childish tears of pain because she didn’t realise she’d needed to _make a fucking appointment_. 

The door handle turns, and the door opens slowly. Fred doesn’t see her, he’s looking straight at Verity. So it’s true then, she has been replaced. Her tears threaten to fall and she rubs her arm, trying to will away the pain. Verity, in probably her only charitable act so far, cocks her head in Hermione’s direction. 

And then everything’s okay.

Fred breaks out in the biggest smile she’s seen from anyone in months. “Verity you should have said!” he says quickly, eyes not leaving Hermione’s face. 

“Did I miss an appointment for you?” Verity asks flatly.

Fred waves her words away. “No, no, Christmas came early, can’t plan for that.” He turns to glance at Verity quickly. “Thank you, Verity, that’ll be all.” She shoots Hermione a reproachful look and then spins on her heel to leave, fully testing Hermione’s resolve to not be judgemental. 

Fred pulls her into the office, _his office_ , goofy grin stuck to his face. When the door’s shut, he holds her face between his hands and kisses her until she’s breathless and grasping at the door handle for purchase. 

“You look brilliant,” he says, gently coercing her into a chair that’s much softer than it looks. 

“Wish I felt the same,” she says and immediately regrets it, not wanting to force her negativity into his life (“she’s such a _happy_ , pretty girl,” Fleur had said). His face falls and she wants to eat her words.

“You should’ve told me, I’d’ve come to you.” He sits behind the desk and her face feels very, very hot. 

This is really doing something for her, between the rolled up sleeves on his button up and the tie — somehow so different to their school uniforms — and the officiality of the desk, it’s… _sexy_. 

“I, er,” she clears her throat to regain her composure, “I wanted to surprise you. Get the full experience the proper way.” 

“And?” He looks at her, excitement gleaming in his eyes. 

“I always knew you could do it, but this…” she looks to her hands on her legs, “this is something else entirely. It’s amazing.” Fred leans back in her chair and she’s overcome by the urge to climb into his lap, aching muscles be damned. 

“Yeah, good isn’t it?” _He’s so proud of himself,_ nobody has ever deserved it more _._ She grins at him, and smiling has felt so wrong lately but feels so right in this moment. “You came alone?” 

“No, actually. Your sister is here. Or not here, she’s, er, on a date.” Fred narrows his eyes at her and it’s just like old times. “Which she’s perfectly entitled to do, you know, regardless of what you or George or Ronald think.” 

He throws his hands in the air defensively. “No judgement! What my sister does in her own time is her problem. But —,” Hermione sighs.

“Dean Thomas, if you _must_ know.” Fred’s eyes widen and he laughs, apparently involuntarily. 

“That is _not_ what I was going to ask but,” he laughs again, “that’s hilarious. I can’t wait to tell George.” 

“What were you going to ask?” 

“I was going to ask if you’re meeting up with her again or if I get you for the rest of the day.” 

“Oh. Yes. No.” He quirks an eyebrow at her and she realises that she’s not actually answered the question. “I’m yours.” 

“Well, look,” he checks his watch ( _since when can he afford a watch?_ ), “I’ve got a few more hours until I can go for lunch, and then I’ll make George do the rest of this and we can go do whatever.” 

The anxiety jumps back into her throat. “I don’t want to make anything harder for you —,”

“Don’t be daft, ‘Mione, it’s not every day I get a beautiful girl sitting in my office.” 

Hermione, buoyed by the compliment, dramatically looks behind her, masking the pain she feels at the action. “Am I interrupting? Where is she?” 

He laughs at her, then clears space on his desk for her, and just like that they’re off. She scribbles page after page to Viktor then, deciding that she’s got nothing more to say to him, starts a letter to Harry. 

The pain is frustrating, sure, but it’s nothing compared to the distraction of watching Fred fuss with his already dishevelled hair, suck on the end of a quill, unroll and reroll his sleeves. He looks good. Really good. Life out of school suits him astonishingly well, and if she stares just a little too long, then, well, she’s only appreciating the fruits of his labour. 

While shuffling parchment around on his desk, he looks up at her and winks, and the air evacuates her lungs. She’s just been inside for too long, devoid of human contact for too long. Really, she’ll be fine with some deep breaths. 

She feels like a fool and an embarrassment when he has to very slowly walk down the stairs next to her, holding her arm and helping her down each riser like she’s eighty years old. He doesn’t say a word about it, instead chattering on at her about everything in the shop that catches his eye, as if they’re the only two people here. 

At the bottom of the stairs, he weaves their fingers together, signals to Verity that he’s off, and then helps her carefully out of the shop. The quiet summer air is a potent antidote to the excitement inside, and it hits her like a freight train. 

“Where do you live?” she asks, gazing up the empty street. 

He conjures an expression of mock horror, “My word, Granger. What do you take me for? At least buy me dinner first!” Her cheeks prickle and she swallows uncomfortably. “Up there,” he says after a second of her silence, pointing to a window opposite the shop on the second floor of the building. She nods, lips pressed together, scared of embarrassing herself further. 

It’s so silly that she feels like this. They’ve been together for more than a year and not once has she been this flustered or tongue-tied. _But that was at school_. The only thing that’s changed is location and yet it seems to have changed everything. He’s living life for real now, a businessman with a thriving shop, and she’s nothing more than a frivolous schoolgirl. 

“Fancy seeing it?” 

She nods again. 

It’s easier to get up the stairs in his building, even if they do have to go slower. Still, Fred does nothing to indicate this is inconvenient for him, and her heart is so full. 

The flat is exactly what she expected, organised chaos. And surprisingly big, too. Two bedrooms, a sitting room, a separate kitchen, _and_ a proper entrance hall. It’s barely decorated, they’ve obviously not put much thought into that part of life, but it’s furnished at least, and the tester products strewn about the place make it unmistakably theirs. 

“Bit of a mess, really, but we’ve been working such long days it’s been hard to maintain it all.”

“It’s great,” she reassures him, and then glances frustratedly at her trainers. “Look, please don’t say anything about it, this is embarrassing enough as it is, but I can’t actually reach down to undo my trainers.” He kneels down, carefully pulling the laces loose and then oh-so gently lifting her feet from each shoe, placing them back on the ground. On his knees in front of her, he looks up briefly, and her face flushes. 

“Do you want a drink or something? We haven’t got much but…” 

“Water’s fine.” He nods and makes a beeline for the kitchen, and she drifts into the sitting room, running her fingers along the sofa, the bookcases, the walls. How strange it must be to have furniture of your own. 

He hands her a glass of water, which she clutches to her chest, unintentionally minimising the space she occupies in the room. He stands behind her as she gazes out the window, gingerly placing his hands on her waist and dropping butterfly-light kisses along the exposed skin at her neck. 

Her mouth is very dry despite the water she’s chugging. She’s almost certain he’s saying something to her between kisses, but all she can focus on is the feeling of his lips on her skin, the scrape of his stubble against her goosebumps, somehow so much headier than ever before. 

“Want me to go down?”

She chokes on her water.

“Sorry?” she asks, her voice several octaves higher. 

“Downstairs. To the shop. To get lunch. Were you listening to me?” Her knees are suddenly very unstable. 

“Sorry. Hazy. I haven’t been outside in a while.” She cringes at how pathetic it sounds. He laughs lightly, warm breathing ghosting across her collarbone and she shivers. 

“I’ll be back in five, make yourself at home.”

She lowers herself carefully onto his sofa when the door shuts behind him. She scolds herself for her anxiety, she should know by now that she can talk to him about these things, nothing’s changed. It doesn’t stop her from flinching when he opens the door, though, another mark against her emotional maturity. 

“So Verity seems nice,” she says awkwardly when he hands her a sandwich. 

“Yeah, nice enough. She went to Beauxbatons with Fleur, moved over here a few months ago, Merlin only knows why.” Hermione stares at her sandwich, taken aback at her own timidity.

“George doesn’t take lunch up here?” Her voice sounds so unlike her own she wishes she could slap herself. 

“Nah, we’ve got the place to ourselves.” Fred slides a little closer on the sofa, and she huffs out a laugh and his lack of subtlety. There his fingers go, dancing across her cheekbone, up her hairline, tugging slowly but surely through her hair. 

“Fred,” she whispers, though she’s not sure what she’s trying to say. 

When he presses his lips to hers, there’s none of that joyful cockiness that was always there before. He’s slow, careful, his hand cupping her face so gently it’s almost like he’s trying to keep her from falling apart. His stubble scratches at her skin and she really must make a note to tell him how much she likes that. 

For a minute it’s stilted and awkward and she can’t figure out why, it’s not her position (they’d shoved themselves into plenty of far more uncomfortable broom closets at school before), and it’s not the egregious pain in her entire body — she’s grown used to that by now. 

All at once, she remembers. _He’d said he loved her._ He’d said it and she hadn’t and then they’d both gone and gotten themselves blown up. And now it’s too late for her to say anything without it seeming like war-wifery, an inevitable Dear John letter awaiting him, but she can’t _not_ say it because, well, she does love him, and it’s totally inescapable. 

She reaches one shaking hand out, tries to make contact with his chest, realises it’s out of her abilities at the moment, and lets it fall gently to his thigh. She tries to lean forward, to bring him closer to her, but every muscle in her abdomen trembles as if it’s about to give out, and she has to give up here too. Turning her torso is out of the question as well, the last time she’d tried she’d sent a horrifying shock down to her toes that made her feel like she was on fire. She breaks their kiss, leaning her head against his and groaning loudly. 

“I hate this,” it’s so whiny, so childish, but she can’t help it. 

“Alright, hang on, I’m not _that_ bad.” 

“You know what I mean.” He sits back, tweaking a ringlet. She sighs. “They’ve said it could take weeks until I’m better, and much longer until I’m back to normal.” 

“Does it feel like you’re getting better?”

“Yes but —,” Yes what? Yes she was alive, which was in itself a master stroke of luck, but she didn’t feel pretty? Feel useful? How could she be so narcissistic? “It’s stupid.” 

“You, stupid? Doubt it.” 

“I feel so wrong. I can’t do anything for myself and that’s humiliating and,” she lowers her voice, almost hoping he won’t hear her, “I feel so grotesque compared to everyone here. They’re all so beautiful.” 

He jumps up from the couch, and she’s so envious of how his body moves that she could scream. He sprints from the room and she’s left shellshocked, panicked and regretting everything about today.

An owl coos somewhere in the house, and seconds later he’s back. 

“What just happened?” 

“Owled Tonks. Told her I’m keeping you tonight.”

“What?!” 

“You, you’re staying here tonight. Told Tonks so she doesn’t worry.” 

“Crookshanks —,”

“— I’ve seen that cat take down birds triple his size, he’ll survive for one night on whatever it is Tonks actually eats.”

“But won’t George…” Won’t George what? What does she think is going on here? What does she think is going to happen? Surely he only means she’ll hang out here with _them_ , sleep on the couch, and then be on her merry way in the morning? 

“George stays at Ange’s on Fridays.” 

She hadn’t noticed it before but the flat is like a furnace. It must be at least fifty degrees in here. She rings her fingers along the inside of her collar, hoping she doesn’t radiate nervous energy. 

“Now that the time pressure is gone, what do _you_ need?” He looks at her so intensely it’s as if a spotlight is planted directly above her head. She doesn’t have an answer, she never has an answer. She needs to survive. She needs to make it to her next birthday. She needs to protect Harry. She needs to win the war. 

“Distract me,” she says so meekly it sounds like she’s saying it from a room across the house. 

And he does. He pulls out an entire stack of blueprints and notes, almost half a foot tall, and talks her through each and every part. It’s astonishing, everything they’re able to come up with, and in such a short time, too, under so much pressure. His long fingers glide across the pages, pointing out unique solutions to serious problems and exciting Easter eggs they’ve tossed in to entertain friends and family. 

Her mind is so engaged the pain gets shifted to the backburner — still there, bubbling away, but the least of her priorities right now. She wishes she could keep him around all the time, dose him in equal amounts to her pain relief; then she might feel wholly human again. 

“Tonks and Lupin are trying to have a baby,” she blurts when the sun completes its arc in the sky, sending purples and pinks and oranges cascading out across the London sky. The flat is chillier now, but an easy summer chill, the kind that requires a light cardigan, not central heating. 

Fred pauses rifling through his papers. 

“Wow,” he breathes, devastatingly soft. 

“I don’t know what to think about it,” she spills, “I mean, I don’t judge them or anything, but to bring a child into _this_ world? When we don’t even know what will happen?” 

Fred shrugs. “We never know what’s going to happen though, do we? Could all drop dead tomorrow. Might as well take our love and happiness where we can get it.” 

She falls silent, staring at the table in front of them. He’s not wrong, but he’s so blindly optimistic. He’s gone straight to the values and hasn’t thought at all about the practicalities of it. 

“I didn’t think Tonks was interested in blokes.” 

“Did everybody know but me?” She cries, thumping her fist into the sofa cushion. Fred laughs at her. 

“Not everybody, but you know, we bump into each other from time to time now socially, so you do learn things.” 

“Your world is so big now,” she says ruefully. 

“Oh, sorry, is saving the world multiple times before you’re even out of school not exciting enough for you?” He says sarcastically. And then, standing, “Can you drink on your medicine?”

“I suppose so. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t, at least. And I’m mostly done with everything, it’s more spot treatment now.”

“Great. Since we’re, you know, _real adults_ now,” he says the words with reverence, as if he can’t fully believe it himself, “we’ve got loads of booze. I picked up a nice red wine the other day, turns out wine can taste great when it’s not the worst bottle you can smuggle out of the Three Broomsticks. How about I get some food ordered in and we crack it open?” 

So they do, and he makes a meal out of pulling money from his wallet to pay the delivery witch, handing her an entire extra galleon as a tip. She doesn’t have to leave the couch once, he brings her plates, glasses, the food (pies that are almost as good as the ones at Hogwarts), and the bottle of wine. 

It all feels like a window into a life she doesn’t think she’ll ever get. Like normalcy. Somewhere, there’s a parallel universe where she’ll get to have takeaway deliveries and wine with her boyfriend and not get to care about anything except who gets the last drizzle of gravy. That life doesn’t exist for her, not _really_ , so she’ll treasure this when she can. 

For all that she worried about everything changing when he was out living his life and she was stuck in school, it seems as though it’s only made things better. He’s got so many interesting stories now, stories that make her laugh until her stomach muscles feel like they’re going to finally give way and collapse. Her laughter is a reminder that she loves him, that she trusts him, and that if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that talking to him about her feelings is never as scary as she builds it up to be in her head. 

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, glancing at the messy table in front of her. “Verity’s very pretty.”

“She is.”

She chews on the inside of her cheek, unsure how to proceed. “Fleur told me she wanted to set either you or George up with her.” 

“Are you asking me if I think Verity’s attractive?” She turns her head to look out the window. She was going to ask the question but now she’s not sure if she wants to know the answer. “She’s hot but she’s no Hermione Granger.” 

“Don’t make fun of me,” she says bitterly. 

“Are _you_ making fun of _me_?”

“I just thought… with living here, being away from everything, you might want… I didn’t want to get in the way.” 

“You know what your problem is?” he says and she whips her head around to look at him, panic rising steadily in her chest. “You don’t ever put yourself first. It’s always everybody else with you. When it’s not Harry, it’s my sister, when it’s not my sister, it’s my brother, then it’s McGonagall, my mum, the DA, every house-elf in the country, the Order, humankind. You always come second in your own life.” 

She looks away again, embarrassed. 

But he continues on, unbothered: “You, Hermione, need to learn to put yourself first. To take what you want when you want it.” 

The flat is tropical again. 

She secrets a glance at him, and he looks _so hot_. Shirt sleeves rolled like they have been all day, but he’s ditched the top two buttons of his shirt and his tie, his hair is nothing short of anarchic, tousled like his life depends on it. 

She looks back at the wall, dizzy despite having finished less than half of a glass of wine. She’s been here before, even if only in a dream, and it had ended in pain. 

“It’s not that easy,” she whispers, more to herself than him. Her breath comes more shallowly now, she’s losing grasp of her control. 

“Sure it is,” he says, running fingers through her hair, trailing them down her jaw. “You just have to take it.” He tilts her face his direction and she wants this but the thudding in her heart tells her she can’t do it, can’t handle it, _can’t-breathe, can’t-breathe, can’t-breathe_. 

“No, stop,” she gasps out. He drops his hands from her face, leaning back instantly, but it’s not enough to ease the panic coursing through her veins. “I — I had a dream about this.”

There’s worry present in his eyes, but a smirk tugging at his lips. He’s going to try to cheer her up with something funny, and she wishes he would just come out with it already so they can get through this moment. When she looks at him again, the smirk is gone, as if he’s swallowed it entirely. 

“Not a good one?” 

She shakes her head. “Not always. Some were. But one…” she looks at her shaking hands. “I wanted _this_ , but you — you tortured me, the Cruciatus curse. It wasn’t you, but it looked like you, it felt real.”

He leans his hips up off the sofa to pull his wand out of his pocket, and her heart thuds. _No, no, no, this can’t be happening, this can’t be real_. 

Then, slowly, he raises the hand holding his wand, palm out in deference. He doesn’t take his eyes away from her face as he places it on the table in front of them, closer to her than to him. 

Her breathing slows, her heartbeat with it. Safe. She’s safe. He’s doing what he can to prove that to her. 

He stands, offering his hand to her. When she takes it, he pulls her slowly, gently up into his arms.

When he kisses her she knows she’s going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok tonks and lupin having their little gay family is such a Thing for me. i just want them to be happy and i don't want to enable j*anne to get away with erasing the gays!! and different types of families!!


	16. they made their choices and they'll never know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was about time i got some of [the boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DXlOHUSnAw&ab_channel=MaxM) in here

Waking up next to Hermione rules. It’s juvenile, but that’s the best way to put it. _It rules_. 

Her hair takes up most of a pillow, but she’s curled so tightly into herself that the pillow is basically all of the space on the bed that she occupies. The only exploration of hers out into the rest of the bed is her hand, clutched tightly in his own.

He’s not a morning person, not usually, but he’s so giddy he barely slept. Hermione is _definitely_ a morning person, so he’s very surprised that despite the sheaves of light flooding the room, she’s still out cold. He doesn’t want to wake her, but he’s fantasised about this moment a thousand times before, and none of his dreams match up to how this actually feels. He reaches out, runs the backs of his fingers across her face, her ribcage, her stomach, just revelling in the feeling of skin against skin, skin against _her_ skin. 

He’s not a changed man though, not really, and his attention span requires continuous renewal, needs which are not being met by sitting her staring at his sleeping girlfriend, no matter how nice of a sight it is. 

He gently extricates himself from her grasp, then quietly pulls his flannel trousers on, tucking his wand into the waistband. He leaves the room, pulling the door shut gently behind him, wishing that he had a high enough threshold for boredom to stay in there just a few moments longer. 

“Gooood morning, Freddie.” He jumps about a foot in the air, hand shooting to his wand before he clocks that it’s George’s voice. 

“Merlin, you’re lucky I didn’t hurt you.” 

Angelina, sitting at their kitchen table in a wildly oversized t-shirt and joggers, snickers. 

“Had a good night, did you?” George asks, leaning casually against the countertop, looking at him over a steaming cup of coffee. 

“Why are you two even here? Don’t you have a flat of your own?” he asks Angelina, bumping George out of the way to grab a mug and filling it with much-needed coffee for himself. 

“Alicia met an American.” Angelina says simply, as if that’s in any way an answer.

“And?” 

“Americans are into sofa sex apparently,” she sighs. 

“Yeah, barbaric, nobody _civilised_ would do such a thing, right Gred?” George says, egging him on. 

And it works. He drops his spoon into the sink with a loud clang. 

“We did _not_ have sex on the sofa, thank you very much.” George hoots with laughter, socking him on the shoulder. 

“But you did have sex?”

Fred puts his hands palm-down on the countertop, stretches his legs out and looks down at the floor, wondering how illegal it is to throw his brother and business partner out a window. 

“Can you two please fuck off? Don’t you have a shift to be working?”

“Nope,” George says smugly, “Lee’s covering it. I wanted a lie-in.” 

“Okay well you’re not having a lie-in now so how about you go ahead on out?” 

“Touchy touchy. She’ll be fine, the walk from your bedroom to the kitchen barely counts as a walk of shame at all.” 

“Besides, it’s far less embarrassing than my first walk of shame. Imagine the first person you see being Patricia Stimpson, hellbent on asking you if it was _just like she thought it would be_. At least Hermione’s protected from that.” Angelina chimes in and Fred raises his head from between his arms to glare at her. 

“You used to not be as bad as him, you know that?” Angelina shrugs, offering nothing more a smirk in response. “Anyways it’s not the walk of shame I’m worried about, it’s the _walking._ ” 

“Oi oi oi,” George cheers. 

“Not like that you degenerate. She’s still pretty fucked up from the Ministry, she’s only just up and walking again anyways.” 

“That poor girl,” Angelina coos. “Is there anything I can do?” 

“Not really, no. It’s a waiting game, I guess. She didn’t seem to know much, and if _she_ doesn’t know much then I suspect there’s not much information on offer.” 

Angelina stands abruptly, “We can go, I want to hear the verdict from Alicia anyways.”

“Excuse me?” George says indignantly. 

“You heard me. Today I’m finding out if a barbaric Yankee shag is worth the fuss.” She pushes on him playfully, and he abandons his coffee, throwing his arms in the air as he lets her push him out of the kitchen. 

But it’s not quick enough, a shocked Angelina stutters: “Oh! Good morning Hermione!” And then, in an obviously contrived cheery voice: “Hope you slept well! We’re on our way out now, don’t mind us.” 

He can’t hear what Hermione says, but Angelina laughs politely, and then a door opens and shuts — he’s not sure whose. He quickly shoves the spare coffee mugs into the sink, flicking his wand to wash and dry them, and then setting the kettle on to boil again. He’s not sure what else to do, he’s never had to make breakfast for anyone else before, never had to worry about how to take care of someone in the morning. 

“Morning,” she says and he spins around to face her. Dressed in a t-shirt of his that hangs like a dress on her, she looks stunning. 

“Sleep okay?” 

She grins at him, and he’d go to the farthest corners of the Earth if it meant she’d smile like that for him again. “I slept fine, thank you.” 

Coolness and dignity be damned, he closes the gap between them and tilts her head back, kissing her long and carefully. 

“None of that please, this is a family-friendly household” George calls from halfway out the door, and Fred salutes him with two fingers. Hermione’s face is bright red, and she doesn’t turn around. 

“Feeling okay?” 

She rubs her arms, as if sussing out a pain level to report back to him. “I’ve felt worse.” He nods. That’s okay, that’s something. He can work with that. 

“Well I’m not working today, so the day is ours. Whatever you’re up for, we can do. The world is your oyster, the sky’s the limit and all the other clichés I’m forgetting.”

“Actually,” Hermione says, fingering the knots on the kitchen table nervously, “I was thinking of just staying in bed.” 

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

✶✶✶

  
  


Taking Hermione back to Tonks’ flat is weird, like he’s watching a clip from someone else’s life. It’s not just that he hates the underground trains — though he does really, really hate them — it’s that it’s so normal as to be unnerving. Walking through the streets of London hand-in-hand is something George and Angelina get to do, so far removed from this war and everything that that means that a day is only a day to them. He and Hermione? It’s different, less parochial, almost. 

George doesn’t have to worry that Harry Potter will show up on Angelina’s doorstep and plunge her into a nightmare, he just gets to say he’ll see her Friday at six and know that that’ll be the case. And if he doesn’t feel like trekking halfway across London to see Angelina home, then he doesn’t have to, he won’t be racked by panic at the very real possibility that she’ll be murdered in cold blood. 

He’s got an ulterior motive for escorting her home too, not that she needs to know that. Tonks has been his and George’s best advocate (after Bill and Sirius) in the Order, and he wants to check up on the progression of their membership. 

According to Tonks, the biggest stumbling block is still his mother, but, as she’s very careful to remind him, entrance to the Order is based on a simple-majority vote, and try though she might, Molly Weasley is only one person. 

“Remus is with Sirius right now, I’ll let them know you’re coming. If you convince Remus, have him speak to McGonagall — she’ll listen to him.” 

✶✶✶

He’s been to Grimmauld Place twice since Christmas. The first time was hours after he and George had left Hogwarts, when Bill had torn into the empty, bare shop and told them something bad was happening and that they needed to go, _now_. The second time was two days after when, bruised and exhausted, everyone who had been at the Ministry had been corralled into the kitchen and asked to list out the names of every Death Eater they could identify. It had made Fred genuinely sick to his stomach, he was so overcome with guilt that as he sat there, naming all the ones he was certain he’d seen (Malfoy, the Lestranges, Crabbe and Goyle Sr., at least a dozen others), that the only ones he _couldn’t_ remember were the one who’d attacked Ginny and Hermione. He’d scrunched his eyes shut, forced himself to relive every moment of it, to follow through the footsteps he’d taken, seeing the dark cloaks billow around him, watching their bodies jump and slide about, but when he tried to conjure their faces… nothing. 

“Trauma,” Lupin had explained sagely, “does funny things to our memories.”

But Fred wasn’t traumatised. He was angry, unspeakably so, and jumpier than normal, sure, but he’d just started a business, was working eighteen hour days, and not sleeping well when he finally did have the chance to crawl into bed. All of that explained his unstable emotions better than trauma, or whatever other psychobabble Lupin wanted to introduce him to. 

He hadn’t been avoiding Grimmauld Place, not as such, there just wasn’t anything to encourage him to visit it anymore. The house remained mostly empty, except for during Order meetings, and Sirius was difficult to deal with at the moment. 

That night, he and Lupin had apparated here first. Hermione had been limp in his arms, his brain screaming at him too loudly to remind himself that there were magical solutions to his problems. Lupin, battle-hardened, who had probably lived this scenario more times than Fred cared to think about, had cast a weightlessness charm on Sirius, making it that much easier to carry his lifeless form into the townhouse. 

Fred hadn’t made it that far. 

He’d collapsed to his knees on the front steps, laying Hermione out on the steps, cradling her head in his hands, shaking so hard he couldn’t do anything more than keep her head off the cold ground. 

He might have been crying by the time Lupin had come back outside, he can’t remember, but he knows that the only words he’d said then were:

“ _Help me_.” 

His memory is hazy after that, he remembers bright lights after that. He shouted as someone, several people, probably, They’d taken Hermione away from him, and then Bill was there somehow, hugging him around his shoulders, more to restrain him than to comfort him. It’d felt like hours, hours, and then his mum and dad were there, so many people were there, and it was unnervingly quiet, and he kept yelling just to stop the silence. When George finally showed up, he’d pulled him away into one of the few empty rooms in the whole building and that was it, he was sobbing like he’d never sobbed before. 

He’s been standing outside Grimmauld Place for ten minutes staring at the front steps, jingling his keys absentmindedly to ward off the thoughts in his head. He tugs his hand through his hair, cracks his neck, and then jogs up the steps. 

Lupin answers the door, and behind him the sound of Mrs. Black’s portrait screaming is matched only in volume by Sirius’s bellowing. Lupin beckons him in, raises his wand to the portrait, and silences it. 

He moves forward into the kitchen. It looks almost exactly like it had that night. The hair in the back of his neck prickles. 

“Sorry about that,” Lupin says. He glances at his watch. “Can I get you anything? A beer?” 

It doesn’t matter how much they go through together, Fred will never get over the strangeness of drinking with his former professor. But: free beer, who is he to say no?

Lupin hands him a bottle, a muggle lager. _Fair enough_. Sirius slinks into the kitchen behind Lupin, looking completely wrecked. 

“Alright, mate?” 

“Been better,” he says, pulling out a chair and collapsing into it. “What can we do you for?” 

Lupin gestures for him to sit, and he does, taking a sip to take the edge off the memories tugging at the periphery of his psyche. 

He cracks his knuckles, puts the bottle down on the table, and makes his case. Lupin’s face is unreadable, a mask that is wrinkled and aged far beyond his thirty-six years. It’s so unlike his mother and father who, despite the hardship in their lives, have laugh lines carved deep into their skin, evidence of lives happily lived. The wrinkles on Lupin’s face are all hard-earned, ineludible proof of the ways the world has been unkind to him. It’s a future Fred fears for himself. 

Sirius, meanwhile, he can read like a book. He bites his knuckle to hide a shit-eating grin, bangs his closed fist on the table when he agrees, and crushes his beer in record time. Sirius, for all his faults, speaks a language Fred can understand. Nothing is ever too dire for him to find humour in, to find a challenge to be defeated.

“Your stunt was inspired,” he says when Fred’s done pitching. “Wish we’d thought of something like that.” Even Lupin smiles at that. “Shop’s going good, is it?”

Fred leans back, twirls his bottle in his hand. “Yeah, brilliantly.” 

“And our Hermione?” He swallows, stares at the neck of the bottle. 

“Is she walking again, at least?” Lupin asks, expression soft, encouraging. 

“You know what she’s like, she’d be walking even if it was killing her.” At this, both Lupin and Sirius look to each other and laugh. 

“And that duelling club of yours, her idea, was it?” Fred shrugs. Sirius shouldn’t even need to ask. 

“Look, Fred. I speak for the both of us, I think, when I say that I have no problem with you and your brother joining the Order, Merlin knows you’re cleverer than some of the chancers we’ve allowed in already, but are you sure you want this to be your life?” 

Fred stares at Lupin. He had never considered any other options. Sirius stands, opens another bottle of beer, and hands it to him. 

“Hermione reminds me so much of my best friend Lily — Harry’s mum. She was a half-blood, too, cleverest witch I’ve ever known. I miss her everyday,” Lupin says, staring at the tabletop. “She and James, they sacrificed themselves for Harry, but they didn’t have a choice. We were child soldiers, our fates were sealed before we even finished school, our futures stolen from us. Lily was good, the best of people, and even if she had a choice I know she would have sacrificed herself for Harry, but _she didn’t have a choice_. It doesn’t have to be that way for you. _You_ can have a life, live to see your twenty-second birthday.” 

“Your mum thinks you and your brother are still kids,” Sirius cuts in. “I don’t think you are. I think you’re adults who deserve to choose what kind of life you get to lead.” 

“If you two decide to apply, I’ll happily endorse your application,” Lupin says, and that’s enough. He can work with that. 

✶✶✶

Hermione really does get stronger with every passing day, even if she doesn’t always believe it herself. At the end of her second week in London, she comes into work with him, even offering to man the till for an hour while Verity takes her lunch break, leaving Fred free to work on some product development, an item on his to-do list he’d recently convinced himself he was never going to get to. 

He stands on the balcony outside his office for ten minutes, watching the mayhem unfold below him. Business has been remarkably strong — but it’s the summertime, school isn’t in. In a few short months Hogwarts will reconvene for the year, and what then? How much of their business will board the train at Platform 9¾ and not return until December? At some point they’ll have to expand into Hogsmeade, that much is obvious, but will that become a necessity before they’re able to rise to the challenge?

If they can launch a few new lines before school starts, maybe some targeting younger kids, the ones who won’t be heading off to Hogwarts just yet, it might act as an insurance policy. To do that, though, they’ll need to actually develop products to comprise that line, which he might be able to do if it weren’t so goddamn loud all the time. He grumpily casts a silencing charm, then kicks his legs up onto the desk, leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall. 

If he can just remember what sorts of things he and George had made for themselves when _they_ were kids, he’d be back in business. But every time he stops to think, clears his head long enough to try to and catch a memory, he’s left with a tight feeling in his chest. 

He’s sure that at one point he and George had managed to tie snap-bangs to the gnomes in the garden, but every time he gets near to remembering how they’d done it, the sound of the snap bangs erupting morphs into the sound of misaimed magic battering into marble walls, glass shattering, and Ginny screaming as her ankle twists and snaps under the control of Dolohov’s wand. The gnomes running around his memory don white robes and one of them gruffly tells him that he can’t see Hermione, that he needs to sit down and be patient, and it would be so sickly funny that a fucking _gnome_ is telling him this if his ribcage wasn’t making a valiant effort to strangle his lungs —

He slams his palm onto the desk, using the ringing pain to scatter the thoughts. 

He can’t do this. The silence is too fraught, the chaos downstairs is too overwhelming. He can’t think, it’s no use. 

He stands so quickly his chair hits the wall and ricochets loudly. _At least it’s not broken_. 

He moves to the balcony again, surveying the shop. Verity is back from lunch behind the tills once again, so he sweeps across the floor in search of Hermione. When he spots her, he bites back a grin. She’s standing by the Pygmy puffs, while a guy he vaguely recognises — a Gryffindor in the year below him, maybe? — puts on his best moves. She must not have looked at him yet, because everything about her body language tells him she hasn’t noticed this guy’s advances. 

Fred crosses his arms across the bannister, leaning forward to watch the scene better. This guy is really operating at a hundred-and-ten percent, perfectly squared stance, thumbs in his belt loops, head tilted downwards; he looks like a parody of all egotistical men everywhere. George slides his arms onto the railing beside him. 

“What’re we watching?” Fred jerks his head in the direction of the action. “Ah, Cormac McLaggen, what a prick.” _Cormac McLaggen, of course_. The guy who couldn’t make quidditch tryouts last year because he’d eaten doxy eggs on a dare. “Wow, she’s really not picking up on it, is she?” 

“I don’t think she’s actually looked at him yet,” Fred explains. As if he’d planned it, Hermione looks up at McLaggen, and immediately takes an enormous step backwards, almost knocking a display stand over in her haste to put distance between the two of them. 

He and George roar with laughter. 

✶✶✶

Bill invites them over for dinner that Saturday, which is so laughably formal he barely has any idea what to do with the letter, but he supposes things are different now that Fleur is in his life making a proper adult out of him, so he indulges it. He brings a bottle of wine, because Hermione insists that’s the polite thing to do, and he trusts her judgement on this sort of thing, even if he does expect Fleur to scoff at their lowbrow English wine. 

Fleur is good with Hermione, meeting them at the bottom of the entrance stairs and taking Hermione’s arm in her own as if this is how she greets all her guests, as though walking them up one painfully slow step at a time is just how these things are done. 

Bill is good, too, but Bill is good with everyone and has never come across a situation he can’t immediately adapt to. He gets Hermione talking, immediately pinpointing a topic that’ll get her so engaged that she barely notices or protests when he tucks an extra cushion behind her on the armchair, moves the side table closer to her so she doesn’t have to reach for anything. Fred nods a thank you when he catches Bill’s eye. Bill shrugs, and Fred knows what it means — this is just what he does for family. 

“So how is living with Tonks, Hermione?” Bill asks during a rare lull in the conversation. 

“It’s lovely, she’s been so good to me.”

“I always liked her, very funny, very edgy. She and Charlie were good friends at school, you know, I was always surprised that they didn’t go to Romania together, though I suppose Tonks was a bit more studious than he was, which gave her more options.” The colour drains from Hermione’s face, and Fred’s brain clocks into overdrive searching for a way to steer the conversation away from anything even tangentially related to her parents. 

“George and I are going to apply to join the Order,” he says quickly, almost too loudly. It’s enough, though. Fleur, too, has been struggling to gain her acceptance into the Order, and Bill’s off like a rocket, ranting about the unsustainably of an underground resistance movement getting hung up on petty grievances and prejudices. Hermione shoots him a grateful look, but it’s short lived: Bill stumbles onto the topic of international cooperation, and then Hermione is swept up in the ranting too. Exactly as it should be. 

Hermione asks if they can walk back to his flat instead of taking the underground trains, and he’s more than happy to comply. Bill’s flat is in a relatively new magical enclave in Whitechapel, built up in the 1800s, to house an influx of wizards from Ireland. Now, it mostly caters to young professionals, many of whom want to live within walking distance of Diagon Alley, while still maintaining some closeness to the muggle world. At a normal walking pace, Fred reckons he could cover the distance at his normal walking pace in about fifteen minutes. With Hermione limping along, it’ll probably take double that time. 

Not that he’s complaining. 

For every slight improvement in her manoeuvrability, Hermione’s mood has improved tenfold. She doesn’t tremble as much anymore, doesn’t go stock-still as often when confronted with an unexpectedly loud noise and, most excitingly for him, no longer keeps him at an arms’ length when the panic overcomes her. It’s an impressive amount of progress for such a short period of time, but he’s committed to maintaining it, even if it does mean sometimes skipping the easier solutions to problems to make her more comfortable. 

Plus, the cramped, speedy trains don’t give him nearly as much time and space as he’d like to just stare at her. And oh boy does he _really_ want to stare at her.

She’s not even wearing anything particularly out of the ordinary — jeans and a top, and he’s sure his sister would berate him for not knowing what _kind_ of top it is (they’re all the same, really), but all he thinks he needs to know is that it looks good. Her arms and shoulders are bare, it probably saves her from uncomfortable, constrictive material, but as far as he’s concerned it’s freedom to trace his fingertips along her skin, up her biceps, across her shoulder blades, down her her spine and then up again, up, up her neck and into her hair. 

She suits city life, she really does. Most people look sickly, washed out by the awful street lights and sickening pollution, but she seems to rise above it somehow. It’s like she’s made the whole city work for her, and it shows. It shows so much, he notes with an equal mix of disdain and pride, that several men standing outside a pub a few metres ahead of them have paused their conversation to watch her. 

With all the bravado that such a situation demands, he raises his arm in the air, dramatically settling it around her shoulder, pulling her in closer. 

She looks up at him, “Can I help you?”

“Can’t a bloke show affection for his girlfriend?” She blinks at him, then looks straight forward. She sighs so forcefully he’s worried she might actually blow herself away. 

“You are incorrigible.” Doesn’t matter, he still leans down to kiss her head, making direct eye contact with the men. 

When they’ve passed them, she smacks the back of her hand against his chest, and whatever she’s trying to tell him falls completely by the wayside thanks to his excitement at her being able to do that again. She hadn’t even flinched, no sharp intake of breath, nothing. He catches her hand, pinning it to her chest and then, at the first chance, backs her against the wall of the nearest building, kissing her like it’s how he’s going to save the world. 

She pulls away, panting heavily, and makes an embarrassingly weak attempt at scolding him for the public display of affection. 

“Let them watch,” the completely uncontrollable side of him whispers, capturing her lips again. Her eyes flutter shut again, and she’s probably come to the same conclusion he has: it’s one in the morning on a Saturday night in the centre of London, _nobody_ is stopping to watch two teenagers feeling each other up. And, Merlin, he’s going to take advantage of that. 

He kisses down the side of her neck and she grabs at the hair at the nape of his neck. She pulls it, and he can’t help the breathy moan that tumbles from his lips. 

“Home.” She demands, and he marvels at her word choice. _She had called his flat home._ And who was he to deny her that? 

✶✶✶

They officially tender an application to the Order of the Phoenix the week before Hermione is set to return to the Burrow. She comes to sit in their flat while they wait to hear the answer, not an ounce of nervousness in her whole body. He’s not sure what she expected — he hadn’t actually talked to her about any of this, had mostly just told her it was happening and left it there — but for her to go along with this without a word seems… unlike her. 

She sits on the floor by the window, knees tucked up beneath her chin (he never in his life thought he’d ever be so excited to see someone do that), listening intently as George runs through all the people they’ve had to personally convince. 

“Hermione,” Fred says suddenly, cutting George off midway through him explaining how they’d managed to corner Mundungus Fletcher, “You haven’t said what you think about all this.”

She turns to look at him, her face a mask of unreadable formality. “Think about what, Fred?”

“Us joining the Order.” 

“I think it’s a good thing,” she says primly. 

“You think it’s a good thing?” He looks at George then back to her. “That’s it, a good thing? No conditions or reservations?” She doesn’t break eye contact with her, and he forgets how unnerving it can be to be caught under her microscope like this. 

“I’m going back to school in a few months. Right up to the north of the country, to a place everybody is convinced is the safest place in the country despite at minimum five years of evidence to the contrary. There, neither Dumbledore, nor McGonagall, nor, obviously, Snape, will deign to feed us any information about the outside world. Ginny and Ron will be relegated to sneaking information out of your mother, who gets quieter and quieter on these things every day, and Harry will be stuck hoping that nobody intercepts mail sent to Sirius. If we’re _lucky_ we’ll know next to nothing.” 

“So you want me to keep you updated?” She stares at him as if this should have been immediately obvious. “I feel so used,” he says with mock embarrassment. 

“You’ll live. Besides, I need _something_ to encourage you to actually write to me.”

They make it in, because of course they do, and nothing really changes. He didn’t expect it to, not really, but he’s still a little surprised. They’re still just them, struggling to run a business by day, juggling an ever-expanding social life at night. 

Hermione spends every other day with him, scheduling it so that her last night in London will be spent with Tonks. He’s not bitter about it, maybe a little jealous, but really, he gets it. Tonks is a reminder to her that families can be more than just parents and children, that though her parents are far removed from her, she is not totally alone. The choice to stay with Tonks before she’s submerged again in the intensity of her normal life is just good sense, and he can’t begrudge her that. 

And besides, he’s been grumpier than normal lately, his rage on a hair trigger, and she doesn’t need to be around that. He’d dropped a vial in the stockroom earlier today and had nearly broken a table in response. The shattering of the glass had been nauseatingly close to the pitch of Ginny’s scream when her ankle had snapped, and in that moment he was no longer in his own shop, but imprisoned in the Ministry surrounded by Death Eaters on all sides.

George had found him, hand bleeding profusely from his limp-wristed attempts to collect the glass. He’d taken one long look at him, vanished the glass shards, healed his hand, and sent him home for the day. 

He’s not sure if it was the right response. On the one hand, there were too many variables in play at the shop and while chairs and vials were fixable, people were not. Not that he’d anticipated getting violent with another person (the table he’d fallen over trying to escape the nightmare in his mind), but the risk was still there. The silent stillness of their flat is suffocating, even with all the windows thrown open in a desperate attempt to beckon life into the rooms. 

So he busies himself how he can, pulling out old blueprints from the myriad stacks in their sitting room, spreading them across the table and looking systematically for flaws in the products, turning them over in his mind, seeking improvements in their form and function. Since taking on the shop full time, he feels like he understands Hermione more than ever, the long, taxing hours she’d spent at the library. It’s meditative. Every scribbled word and errant thought feels like a victory of its own in a tightly controlled environment where failure does not exist. 

He thinks of her, what she looks like late at night and wide awake in the library or the common room. Hair wild, frizzy at the hairline from her repeated attempts to brush it out of her face. Her feet, free of the standard-issue shoes, tucked beneath opposing legs, a thick tome weighting her black uniform skirt down in her lap. He thinks of the bare skin on her neck above her jumper, the soft spot along her clavicle that makes her gasp when he kisses it, and how she’d stare at him, wide-eyed, when he’d sucked a bruise into it. 

She was so much quieter than he’d anticipated, and at first he’d panicked, assuming he was doing everything wrong. But when he’d paused to think about it, it had thrilled him: stunning Hermione Granger into silence was a monumental feat. 

And it’s not like she’s completely silent, reduced to soft gasps and breathy moans, pawing at him gently when even those muted noises fail her. He thinks of how she feels pressed between him and the mattress, both of her wrists caught in just one of his hands. He feels her breath hot against the shell of his ear, shallower and shallower until she’s gulping in air all at once. 

  
He opens his eyes, blinking away the images, and then unbuttons the top button of his shirt. _It’s going to be a long four months._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is where i reckon [bill's flat](https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/720/detail/#) is –– also check out that banging bit of local history. such a cool website.


End file.
